


I Exist to be Caught by You

by Thornofthelily



Category: Persona 5
Genre: Akechi has a palace, Biting, But also lots of dirty stuff, But like major royal spoilers overall, Dirty Talk, Domination games, Explicit Sex, Fingering, Fuck first then fall in love, Handcuffs, Happy Ending, Hegel and other philosophy, Hurt/Comfort, I just made it as gay as it deserved, Joker is into leather gloves, Like a lot of philosophy talk, M/M, Metaverse Shenanigans, Mostly Canon Compliant, Oral Sex, Persona 5: The Royal Spoilers, Toys, handjobs, joker and akechi switch, lots of competitiveness, mild royal spoilers for Akechi's confidant rank, mostly in the first and last chapters, post-canon stuff, some praise kink, sub!joker and dom!akechi, threats at gunpoint but joker's into it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-28
Updated: 2020-07-10
Packaged: 2021-03-03 01:28:43
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 9
Words: 42,305
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24416641
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Thornofthelily/pseuds/Thornofthelily
Summary: Joker, stewing in another lost billiards game, ponders the impossible: Would someone as twisted as Goro Akechi have a Palace? Surely not, since he has a Persona... right? Then why does he get a hit on the Nav? And what does he find within?
Relationships: Akechi Goro & Kurusu Akira, Akechi Goro/Kurusu Akira, Akechi Goro/Persona 5 Protagonist
Comments: 50
Kudos: 470





	1. A Union of Opposites

**Author's Note:**

> I really bullshitted a lot of the philosophy... sorry to any philosophy majors out there.

It started as a question. A bitter, irritated question after a particularly brutal billiards loss.

Did Akechi have a Palace?

I immediately knew the answer, of course. Morgana told us early on, Persona-users don’t have Palaces. And Akechi had recently joined our team, so I knew he had a Persona. That should have been the end of it. But as we went through Sae’s Palace, as Akechi kept challenging me in the most unexpected and delicious ways, as he deftly maneuvered through Shadow Sae’s traps, and as I finally won a billiards game and we faced off in Mementos, the question kept itching in my skull.

Did Akechi… have a Palace?

Morgana and I had discussed how Akechi probably had a Persona longer than any of us, considering how he heard Morgana back at the TV station. The two of us and Futaba had been listening to his conversations through the bug in his phone. He told me to my face that he hated me. He said far worse when he thought I couldn’t hear.

How could someone so devious, so duplicitous, not have a massively distorted view of the world? How could Akechi not have a Palace?

And finally, one night, I decided to check.

After all, I told myself. Futaba got her Persona while she was in her own Palace, and the distortion didn’t crumble around us. Maybe it was possible to somehow get a Persona and still maintain a Palace. There was a lot we still did’t know about the Metaverse.

So one night, I feigned sleeping and waited for Morgana to go about his regular patrols around Yongen. He had been working especially hard to make himself useful, so he spent a few hours every night looking for new leads. I waited until he left so he wouldn’t feel like I was doubting him, and bonus, I wouldn’t see those big blue eyes roll out of his little kitty face when I searched for something so silly.

Of _course_ Akechi didn’t have a Palace. I opened the MetaNav and said his name. And _of course_ he--

_-One result found-_

My heartbeat echoed in my ears.

Impossible. Impossible! And yet...

Akechi never ceased to surprise me. Even the little smile I caught on my lips surprised me.

Logic told me to wait until Morgana came back, tell him what I discovered. We could discuss our strategy, meet with the team, investigate. Maybe even change his heart to either convince him to abandon whatever plot he had against us, or maybe get him to join us for real.

I twirled a lock of hair around my finger. It would be helpful if I had more than that, right? If I could find out his keywords, that would be even better, wouldn’t it? Besides, I knew Akechi better than any of the Thieves did.

Next would be a location. But where could his Palace be? He spent a lot of time with Sae… maybe his was also the courthouse? Maybe the police station?

- _No data available._ -

No, too obvious. That would be too small for Akechi. He clearly had grander plans, working for a conspirator. So not the jazz club, not Penguin Sniper. Something bigger, something bigger...

I was stumped for a moment, trying to remember every one of our interactions. The news station? He often appeared there, and it was clearly his domain, the first place we met and he called me out of the blue with those challenging eyes, as though daring me to question him… but no. I shook my head. I had no idea where Akechi’s distortion could be. It seemed like his name was all across Tokyo these days…

...wait. I typed something into the Nav.

- _Input accepted._ -

Ah. _All across Tokyo_ _, huh? Ambitious, aren’t you?_ Each little victory gave me a thrill, knowing I was secretly winning one over Akechi without him even knowing it.

Lastly, how did he see Tokyo? A shogi board? Nope, sorry Hifumi. Maybe chess? No… no this wouldn’t be a game to him. Like billiards, like darts, like everything between us, he always had to be in charge. A game involved risk. A chance he could lose. Even on his first foray into a Palace with us, pretending like he was a newbie, he was in control, still moving us the way he wanted us. His theatrics on camera. The layers of personality I had to strip from him to see even a glimmer of his true self. His costuming and preening to be a hero when he was manipulating us all…

_All the world’s a stage._

Akechi’s Palace was a theatre.

_-_ _Input accepted. Begin navigation?_ _-_

The Nav hummed and the option to begin navigation blinked on my phone. It was late. Morgana still hadn’t returned. I could wait to tell the others what I discovered; we could plan what to do about this. We were still waiting until the day to send Sae’s calling card. He wouldn’t see it coming. I could put down my phone and roll over, pull the sheets over my head and sleep.

My thumb trembled over the navigate button. I couldn’t take it away.

If we all vanished into the Metaverse, and Akechi couldn’t find us, he might think we were training without him. He might seek us in Mementos, and if he didn’t find us there… did he know? Did he know he had his own Palace? Surely someone as controlled and controlling as he would have checked himself, right? He ingratiated himself to us. He knew our methods. He would want to cover every angle.

We couldn’t go in together. I could go with Morgana, tonight, just the two of us, see if we could manage with just a small team. Maybe even Futaba. But an unexpected possessiveness seized me. Akechi was _my_ rival. He even formally challenged me, the theatrical dolt. I grabbed the glove he threw at me, the glove I kept nearby like a promise, and I could almost imagine his warmth still lingering… I shook my head. The idea of bringing others into his Palace seemed wrong. Cheating, somehow. The navigate button still glowed on my screen, challenging me. It felt like Akechi calling me from the Metaverse.

I slipped into casual clothes and left a note for Morgana, locking the door to the Leblanc behind me. I took the glove.

It was a reckless, dumb thought. Not even worth entertaining. We already had our plan for escaping Akechi’s scheme. The risk of snooping around his Palace was too great, too wild, too ridiculous to dwell on.

Anywhere in Tokyo, was it? Then I shouldn’t have to go far.

When I triggered the Nav, I blended almost seamlessly into the Metaverse, without even having to leave Yongen. Seamless, except for my clothes shifting into that of a Thief. I saw his Palace in the distance, a grand building, like the Globe or the Sydney Opera House, blazing bright lights in the night sky. Even though I was far away, I was still a threat. That pleased me more than it should.

I didn’t know what I expected as I approached, weaving through the still-familiar streets and back alleys. Even I wouldn’t get far in the Palace on my own. Eventually, I would have to bring the team to have any hope of finding the Treasure. But all thoughts of alerting the other Phantom Thieves vanished when I got to the theatre properly.

Akechi’s Palace was plastered with my face.

Posters advertising upcoming plays, extolling the rave review of past plays, headshots of me in various costumes, even dressed in my own Thief’s gear, declaring me “Director Akechi’s star”. I was headlining every play. I was advertised for autograph events and interviews.

How could I pass up an invitation like that?

Now, the infiltration point. The front door obviously wouldn’t work- like Madarame, a huge line of cognitive people streamed out and wrapped around one side of the building. Shadows disguised as bouncers loitered about. I couldn’t afford to be seen, so I slid along the wall, looking for a window, a drain pipe I could climb, something. Around one corner, I found a door labeled “Cast Entrance.” _Well, if he’s put me as the star in all his productions, I might as well be cast._ It was locked, but I picked it easily enough. I might not have been a real criminal before this began, but damned if the world didn’t turn me into one… and a damn good one, turned out, as I popped the door open. I slipped inside and shut the door behind me.

I entered a dark hallway, navigating carefully. I ducked into every corner, under every table, trying to keep a mental map in my head. It was harder than I expected- I had become so used to Futaba and her navigation that going alone felt foreign, almost impossible. I still get lost several times and a few Shadows stalked around me. I nearly got caught twice. My palms were sweaty under my gloves, but I wasn’t afraid. In fact, I was desperately curious, eager to see what lay in the depths of Akechi’s heart. Akechi’s heart, his cognition, that was centered on me. After several agonizing minutes of double-backing and hiding, I found my prize: a door with a large gold star, emblazoned with my name.

It felt like a trap. A fly walking into the spider’s den. I went in anyway. The thrill of being caught was strangely intoxicating. Like a dare. If finding his Palace felt like a challenge, then this was my own dare, right back at him. Try and catch me, Detective Prince.

I saw a glimpse of someone sitting at a lit red vanity and I dove into a clothing rack before realizing... it was me. Akechi’s cognition of me.

I... he... hummed to himself and applied exaggerated stage makeup that looked garish this close up. Big rosie red cheeks and fake eyelashes long enough that they brushed his cheeks when he blinked. I rubbed a hand over my mask self-consciously. _Damn, aren’t they long enough already?_

I wondered if I could... talk to myself, see what Akechi thought of me. He told me he hated me, but that I was a vital ally for his mission. Clearly, whatever he was planning, he needed me to do it. That must be why I was featured so heavily throughout the Palace. But seeing this caricature of myself… I looked small. Blithe. Blissfully unaware.

Would I raise the alarm on myself? Did this other me know what Akechi planned to do to him, to me? As I debated, someone else entered the room. I pulled further from the light as Shadow Akechi entered the room. He wore a slick dark suit with a beret-style hat stylishly cocked to one side, but other than that, didn’t look too outrageous.

 _This is perfect. I’ll get to see them both in action. Then I should leave._ The debate about whether or not the others could see this Palace would come after my intel gathering was complete.

“Are you ready for tonight?” Akechi asked.

“Of course, Director. You know I am always happy to perform for you.”

Is this how he saw me? I gagged. I thought he at least respected me enough to not see me as a doting sycophant. That maybe I had impressed him as a rival during our duel. But he clearly saw me as a simpering sheep awaiting slaughter. I tugged hard on my red gloves, pondered the slight weight his glove made in my jacket pocket. I was still a threat. I still had his challenge to meet.

“Yes..." Shadow Akechi continued, unaware the real Joker was hiding nearby. He placed his hands on my cognitive self’s shoulders. He was standing closer than he was a moment ago, just behind my seated doppelganger. Despite myself, I leaned just a little closer. “You just play right into my hands, don’t you?”

A languid smile split the dull imitation of my face. “Director...” he leaned back, resting his head against Akechi’s stomach. This relationship… he called us rivals, but… what was this?

...I needed to leave, right then. My head was swimming with dangerous, traitorous thoughts. But with Shadow Akechi right in front of me, I couldn’t risk it. I heard my voice whispering Akechi’s name with a fervor and fire that frightened me, because in that moment, I knew I had that same fever.

Akechi planned to kill me and make it look like a suicide. He admitted it. But this... he was obsessed with more than just my death. He saw me... as a toy. And just me! None of the other Phantom Thieves were on any of those posters, no one else’s name on any other door. Why this fixation on me?

I risked peeking back at them, moving to get a better angle. Shadow Akechi leaned over the other me, both their backs to me, and their heads were… their mouths…

I felt dizzy. I couldn’t stay in that room.

I managed to slip out quietly, a storm brewing in my brain. So. Akechi felt _that_ way about me, huh? Maybe all those appearances at Leblanc weren’t just for the stellar coffee. Those nights at Penguin Sniper, drinking at the jazz club, quietly enjoying each other’s company as well as the music. The way he seemed to let his guard down around me, maybe that wasn’t entirely an act. I was so lost in thought, I was spotted by a Shadow and needed to use a smoke bomb to lose it.

I went over every smile, every “coincidence,” the late night texts when he quoted Hegel and discussed the nature of the self, making me study philosophy far above my grade level so I didn’t come across foolish, unable to lose to him even at academics… At the TV station, when we first met, did he target me because he’d seen us in the Metaverse? Did he recognize me through my mask? But if he had seen us in Kamoshida’s Palace or Mementos… why did he befriend me, challenge me, invite me out for-- for what? Dates? The thought made my stomach flutter, and I had to hug my abdomen to squeeze the butterflies lie still.

I had… been interested, of course. Before I knew he was a Persona-user, when he was just this charming, slightly dorky, but clearly brilliant detective. He was my opponent from the start. A detective versus a criminal. But we connected. We bonded. Even Igor confirmed he was among my closest bonds, that our friendship powered some of my Personas.

Did he know, even then? Was I a target for his plans from the beginning, or was his interest more...physical? I heard movement from a door in front of me, and thanks to my training with Kasumi I managed to backflip behind a curtain. Whatever the reason, it was too dangerous to ponder here.

As I approached the exit, I paused. His Palace was a playhouse, with Akechi as the director and myself- or at least, his perception of me- as the star... but what was the play about? How far did this fantasy of his go? My heart twisted into knots of excitement and anticipation, hammering, the same feeling I got when I saw someone’s Treasure. If I learned more about how Akechi saw me, thought about me, could I use that in our plan? More importantly… did he actually _like_ me?

I realized then I had no intention of bringing the others here. This was going to be my little secret.

Instead of leaving from the cast entrance, I crept through the backstage of the theatre, slipping through shadows and doorways in a convoluted layout that I was sure resembled no theatre on Earth. Palaces might look like reality, but they were just as distorted as the hearts that made them. Heart racing, my head full of adrenaline, I somehow navigated my way to the front of the house, finding a small seat near the back of the room. I knew I shouldn’t. I knew it was dangerous and reckless. In the real world, I would be more afraid of getting caught. If my friends were here, I’d do whatever it took it keep them safe. But as Joker, I felt powerful. Unreasonably confident. And around Akechi, I felt foolhardy.

Being a Phantom Thief was turning me into a criminal _and_ an adrenaline junkie.

As soon as I took my seat, the house lights dimmed and the stage lit up. I watched, enthralled, as my cognitive self, dressed as a lamb, took the stage alone. There was no backdrop, no props, and not even much of a monologue. It was...tame. Not what I expected, after seeing how he acted in the dressing room. My doppelganger spent most of the time praising Akechi, espousing the hopelessness of fighting his brilliant plans, but he shared no detail about those plans. Even here, Akechi kept his deepest secrets buried. I bet they were deeper in the theatre, some kind of locked storehouse or underground cavern. I began to wonder if my risk was worth it, if I just wasted my time. Maybe now was the right time to head back and talk to Morgana. I slid out of my seat, hoping to quietly navigate my escape through the dark, when a voice stopped me cold.

“It’s rude to leave in the middle of a show.”

I turned to the voice and saw Akechi. Not Shadow Akechi, in his director’s gear and telling gold eyes, but the _real_ Akechi, in his military jacket and crow’s mask, watching me calmly.

“Fascinating,” he continued. His voice was soft, as though he didn’t want to interrupt the show, but it held a strange lilting to it that made me suspect he might be thinking out loud. His eyes slowly roved over me, occasionally flicking back to the me on stage. He didn’t look hostile yet. More bemused. My knees weakened under that gaze. How did he find me in here? “To think I have two versions of him in my head... One where he is my pawn, and one where he is my enemy. I suppose he is both... he’s in his Thief gear, after all.” His voice sharpened to a point. “Go on. Sit.”

 _I screwed up, I screwed up._ My mind raced. Why was Akechi in his own Palace? With Futaba, we found out a person could enter their own Palace, but it was still extremely dangerous. Why in the world was Akechi here? Why wasn’t he trying to attack me?

I sat deathly still, eyes forward, sweat beading on the back of my neck, but Akechi didn’t say another word. Was he still looking at me? Trying to test my resolve? And what was he talking about, two versions of me? Did he... did he think I was another cognitive being? His cognition of me was both as a tool and an enemy... so he thought I appeared as both. How clever. He was so sure of himself, so smugly confident, he wouldn’t even consider I found my way in here myself. This presented so many opportunities...

I didn’t follow one word of the play. I was too busy alternating between concern, frenzy, excitement, and boredom, so when the lights finally came up, I had worked myself into near desperation, wanting to see his face. Was I a figment of cognition? Or was I real? If I was to escape, I needed to make sure he saw me as just a cognition. And considering what I saw with my doting doppelganger…

The apparitions of an audience didn’t walk away or turn on me- they simply vanished. The theatre crumpled and shrunk until mine and Akechi’s seats were the only ones left. The room lurched once more and suddenly we were on stage, facing each other, lit by a single spotlight. I was impressed, despite myself. Did Akechi have this much control over his own cognitive world? Did having a Persona help him with that control? Things to discuss with Morgana… if I survived.

“So,” Akechi began, leaning forward. He rested his elbows on his knees, and past the long beak of his mask, his eyes were glinting. A whisper of air hung between us. “Another Kurusu Akira in my Palace.” His eyes roamed over my whole body, piercing, evaluating. My skin tingled under my clothes where his gaze touched me. “The details are perfect. Down to every last thread.” He reached for me, and I didn’t know if I should recoil or lean in when he roughly grabbed the collar of my coat and yanked me out of my chair to my knees before him. The toy raygun I teased him about when he joined us ( _I know a guy, we can get you a more realistic gun)_ suddenly didn’t look like a joke after he pressed it under my chin.

“It seems far more likely that the leader of the Phantom Thieves found his way into my Palace, rather than my spontaneous creation of a second Kurusu.”

My heart pounded against my chest. Adrenaline. Danger. Excitement. How to get out of this one...? _Fuck, what is wrong with me?_ “You said it yourself. I am both your toy and your enemy.” I put my hand against the gun, pressing it further into my skin. I would never get used to the sensations in a Palace. The metal was cold and hard and real, nothing like the toy it was in reality. “I exist for you to catch me, don’t I? Aren’t you the one who promised to defeat me?”

I could see the smirk in his eyes. “But if you are just a figment of my mind, it wouldn’t hurt to just kill you anyway, would it? Why would I risk letting you escape?”

“Because of the Hegelian dialectic.” I surprised myself with this answer. We had spent many nights in chats as he went through his philosophy classes, bouncing ideas off me, getting my perspective. He said it was his version of a dialectic- taking opposing positions in an argument and letting them reach their natural conclusion- either destruction of the idea, or synthesis of the opposites into a cohesive ideology. It never made sense before now. For Hegel, his favorite philosopher, this idea came in the Master and Slave dynamic.

Even Akechi looked nonplussed at my answer, so I scrambled to justify myself.

“You are the Master here, Akechi. But in order to know yourself as Master, you need someone to rule against. That would be me. You need me in order to feel like you are in control. But as your Slave, you also fear me. I could take that power of Master from you. If you kill me, you lose your power over me.”

Recognition sparked in his eyes, and he actually looked impressed. I couldn’t help but push a little further, see what I could get away with. I nuzzled my cheek against the gun and smiled up at him. “Your Shadow has taken a liking to Kurusu Akira. But I’m not just Akira. I’m _Joker_. _”_ I risked placing my hand on his knee, and he allowed it. That little touch meant too much to me. “Akira is soft and helpless. Manipulated by the outside world. A sheep for slaughter.” It stung to admit that to myself. “But here, you know I have power. I’m an opponent that’s finally worthy of you, Akechi. The Master always seeks to be recognized by someone his equal.” Akechi’s finger slid off the trigger. I slid my hand up his knee to his thigh and reveled how his eyes twisted and reacted to me. Fuck. This was dangerous in ways I never anticipated.

“But I caught you so easily, Joker.” Akechi’s voice was low, barely contained. An emotion I never heard from him hid just behind his calm facade. “Why would I imagine such an obvious threat?”

“I told you. I exist to be caught by you. I know what you want to do to me.” I risked even more, coming closer even as the gun strained against my skin, a feeling that was becoming less scary and more arousing every second. I slipped my hand to the back of his neck, a tender caress that could turn dangerous any second. “I know you want me dead, Akechi. But I know there’s something else you want, too.” Is that what Akechi wanted, or was it what I wanted? I should be trying to escape, not getting closer. “You might have caught me, but do you think you’ve won?”

Making sure he focused on my face, I slowly, slowly moved my free hand to my hip, where my knife was sheathed. I still had one hand on his neck, and I traced the curve of his jaw with my thumb. “I am the antithesis to your thesis. You want to see me bow before you, to gain recognition from my subjugation, but that isn’t enough. In the real world, you fight against the real Joker. You lost at least once.” His eyes darkened. Shit. Maybe I shouldn’t dwell on reality while trying to convince him I’m not real. Or at least not brag about winning our duel. “Here you want to best me, but you haven’t managed to do that yet, have you?” Okay, I couldn’t help but gloat just a little. I palmed the knife’s handle, and it filled my hand as a natural extension of my being. I leaned further into him, our foreheads nearly touching if not for that long beaked mask. “You say you have caught me so easily? Think again.”

I pressed the blade against Akechi’s thigh, and I felt vindicated by the jerk of his shock. He really did get distracted by me, didn’t he? My breath quickened. Akechi should be nothing more than a villain, a threat, another wicked person for the Phantom Thieves of Heart to change, but this game... it was thrilling.

Akechi surprised me by laughing again. “Oh, you are good. You certainly do know my weakness, don’t you, Joker?” He shook his head. I tried to ignore the thought that _I_ was somehow his weakness. “That’s your plan, then? Mutually assured destruction? Our dialectic ends in destruction, not synthesis?”

I stroked the knife tip against his leg, enough for him to feel the edge. “Is that what you want?”

“I want you in so many ways, Joker.”

 _Fuck._ Akechi’s responses were just too good. I tried remind myself I needed to escape, but my own eagerness kept interfering. Akechi kept leaving me openings to maneuver, and I could sense the traps he laid for me. My arrogance wanted to take the bait, and my attraction… fuck, my undeniable attraction to Akechi wanted to be trapped.

“Why not have a little fun, then? It doesn’t matter if I’m real or not. You want Joker?” I pulled him closer to me, moving the knife so I could stroke his chest with it, tracing the golden clasps of his vest. “I am Joker.” The gun was still under my chin, and my knife by his heart. We could perform Hegel’s most bloody dialectic right here. But neither of us moved.

Akechi shook his head, smiling. “You think you can spare your life by throwing yourself at me?”

I panicked for an instant, wondering if my stupid curiosity and competitiveness would get me killed. I wanted to move first, to drive that knife home, but I couldn’t do it. Maybe I really was the Slave, unable to act on my own...

“Strip.” He ordered. A chill ran down my spine, and my fear quickly melted into something else, warm and prickling. He stood and stepped away from me, gun still leveled at my head. One step and he robbed me of my only martial advantage. Fine. I had other tricks. And that look in his eyes wasn’t murderous. I knew that look. I could feel it in my own expression. _Hunger._

I started with the gloves. I needed to keep him from losing interest, and I wasn’t willing to release the knife, so I bit down on the fabric above my middle finger and slowly drew my hand free, letting the red glove dangle between my teeth for a second before letting it go. I transferred the knife and repeated it with my other hand, maintaining eye contact with Akechi the entire time. I reached for my mask next, but Akechi fired a warning shot that whizzed past my ear, freezing me in place.

“Leave the mask on.” Right. I could summon my Persona if pulled the mask away.

Kinky.

I shrugged off the coat next, now a little concerned. I’d never actually _put on_ these clothes, so I didn’t know how to take them off. I was a little surprised I could, considering they were just an effect of the Metaverse. I fiddled with the buttons on my vest. They seemed decorative. Damn. How was this supposed to work?

Akechi sneered at my obvious confusion. “Can’t comply, Joker?”

“I’m only dressed like this because of how _you_ think of me.”

“Then make me think of you differently.”

I shivered. I finally dropped the knife, and carefully, I unholstered my gun and set it on the ground. I kicked both weapons away, but my clothes still didn’t change. Then a shameful thought entered my head. Or well, I did try to be ashamed at first.

I crawled on my knees to Akechi.

“Oh? What’s this?” He sounded pleased. “Going to beg?”

“No. But you will.”

I nestled myself between Akechi’s legs and ran my hands up his calves to his thighs once again. God, he felt nice. He was pretty fit- strong muscles firm under my touch. He pressed the gun to the top of my head. Fine. I could perform under pressure. I pressed my nose against his inner thigh, breathing him in. The fabric, too, felt real, and his smell... just the same as when I served him coffee in Leblanc, when I leaned a little too close over the bar and I smiled at him and we pretended like we weren’t measuring each other up. I closed my eyes and I could almost hear the gentle crackling fires and soft bubbling of Sojiro’s brews. I pressed my fingers into the back of his leg and kissed the fabric along his thighs, applying enough pressure he could feel me even through his clothes.

As my mouth neared his groin, the gun pushed me insistently, but I wasn’t going to give in. If he killed me, he wouldn’t get to feel what came next. My hands moved up his leg to his ass, and again, I’m pleased to find taught, lean muscle. I kissed the front of his hips, moving up and across to just under where his belly button should be, and kissed the other side. I wanted to tease him until he really begged, but the solid weight of his pistol reminded me who was really in charge here.

Luckily his belt buckle and pants weren’t too complicated, and when I yanked them down I found bare skin. It made me chuckle.

“What?” Akechi growled.

Realizing how laughing might have seemed, I clarified. “Magical clothing, but no underwear?”

“Ha. I suppose it is strange.” There was a small wonder in his voice, a tiny fragment of the role he played in the real world. But the gun didn’t move. I barely even felt it, because Akechi was exposed before me, and I was nearly drunk with desire.

I took his half-hard dick into my mouth, testing it. He easily fit, so I rolled my tongue around the head, keeping my eyes fixed upward, looking to see how he reacted. I couldn’t see his eyes through the beak of his mask, but I could hear his breath quicken. Promising.

Now all I wanted was to hear him moan. Yet another ridiculous imagined victory, but the only thing I could focus on. I sucked at him until he grew too large to comfortably hold in my mouth, so instead my tongue played at the cleft of the head, under the shaft. His quick reaction to me was almost cute.

“Enjoying it?” I asked with his cock at my lips.

He quickly met my eyes, and even through the mask I could see his frustration. He knew he was starting to fall to me, but he’d never admit that.

“I didn’t tell you to stop,” he insisted, pressing the gun harder. My heart pounded so hard I had trouble breathing. I shouldn’t be so excited by this. I could really die.

Why did that thought make my cock twitch?

I diligently resumed playing with Akechi. He was trying to consciously hold in his reactions, which made me want to make him moan even more. I swallowed him down as far as he fit, holding in the gag, and slowly drew him out, my tongue dragging along his length. No reaction but a slow exhale. Bastard.

I repeated it, again and again, my eyes watering as I tried to hold him deeper, longer, hungrier for a sign, for evidence that he could feel me, but he kept his voice under control, breath strained but slow. I... I wanted to see him react. I wanted him to say my name.

My hands played up his bare legs, sliding up slowly, fingertips only, the barest touch. One hand reached up to grip him at the base, and I experimented, alternating between my mouth and my hand. The other delicately stroked the soft fuzz of his testicles. Such a vulnerable part of him that I could use hurt him so intimately. But I didn’t. Even then, with this chance, I didn’t. I played with him, sucking him, stroking him, swallowing him, just to hear him moan my name.

“You seem experienced, Joker. Do this often?”

I actually had. A few girls, and one guy. But obviously nothing like this, never with my life on the line and my adrenaline and excitement pooling in my hips and numbing my thoughts.

“Why would you imagine _Joker_ is a bad fuck?”

I caught the wicked grin that split his face before he grabbed my chin. “You’re certainly confident, aren’t you?”

Akechi shoved me face-down on the ground and pinned me, and we wrestled, confused, ugly, unskilled, and he grabbed my arms and yanked them behind my back, and I had no way to guard my face as he ground it into the wood of the stage. He gripped my wrists tightly, and suddenly there was a sharp vice, a tight bite of something heavy and unyielding. I heard a chain rattle as I tried to yank free.

“What the...”

“My world. My rules. I want you in handcuffs.”

Damn Metaverse.

He yanked my slacks down to my knees and pushed my face further into the wood. The pain was just as real as the pleasure. I couldn’t see him but I felt his eyes on me. I pulled at my hands again, but they held firm. Being restrained should have made me feel afraid. Helpless. I was more turned on than ever.

“Well, you have me. What are you going to do with me?” My voice was embarrassingly breathless.

Akechi grabbed my hips and hoisted them up until I was ass up, face down.

“Isn’t it obvious? Haven’t you offered to give yourself to me?” The gun was back at the base of my spine. “Or would you rather skip to the end?”

I arched into him as best I could and wiggled my hips. “And miss out on this?”

“You think very highly of yourself, Joker.”

But he still removed the gun from my back.

Both his hands went for my ass, and with my hands restrained there wasn’t much to do… except enjoy it. He pressed his fingers into my flesh, a surprisingly pleasant sensation, kneading slightly in places.

“So nice... Just as I imagined.”

Without him holding down my head, I could turn a little to look at him. He was massaging his fingers into my muscles, staring at me with curious eyes. Then his face cracked into a devastating smile.

“I have an idea. Don’t move, now, Joker.”

I feel my cock twinge with anticipation.

Akechi stood and closed his eyes, hands held out expectantly. Not sure what he was planning, but he’d unexpectedly given me an opening. I tested the handcuffs again. Strong, course. Fortunately, I had lockpicks. Unfortunately, they were not easy to get to. My pants were around my ankles, and I knew I had tools holstered in my belt. Keeping a close eye on Akechi, I strained and reached toward my belt, scrunching up my body and sitting up slightly to get the angles to work right, but moving slowly so as not to make a noise and alert Akechi, who remained still, eyes closed. My shoulders twisted painfully as I reached further and further down, and just as I felt the pouch with my infiltration tools, something tightened, twisted, and snapped, and pain washed down my back into my hips. I slipped a lockpick into my palm and collapsed back into my original position just as Akechi opened his eyes. I didn’t think he noticed me. I was glad I still had the mask- helped hide my expression of pain.

“Very good, Joker. You’re taking orders nicely.” He dropped to his knees behind me, and only then I noticed his hands clasped over over something. I tightened my fist around the lockpick and pretended like I was trying to wiggle my way free to hide the motion.

He grabbed my hair and forced my face away from him, and the movement sent new shockwaves of pain down my back. It made me cry out. I couldn’t see Akechi anymore, and certainly couldn’t try to look at him again. I didn’t know what he had. I didn’t know what he was about to do. My whole body ached. 

I was hard.

Akechi placed one hand on the curve of my backside, and he pushed me open. Then something… touched me there.

“What...?”

Akechi chuckled. “I thought you said you were experienced, Joker. Are you still a virgin, here?”

The...whatever it was pushed further, and it started to hurt.

“Akechi-!” I wanted to sound angry, but my voice was higher, throatier. Did I want this, or did I fear this?

Akechi laughed merrily. “Ahh, so you are. How sweet.” He kissed my hip, a strangely tender gesture. “I’ll be gentle.” I didn’t feel his mask... did he take it off? Was he making himself a little more vulnerable, unable to summon his Persona?

The pressure ceased, and instead I felt something smaller- his finger?- slide into me. It didn’t hurt at all, but it made me squirm. It was rough and dry and uncomfortable but I could tolerate it.

“Trying to get away now? But we’re only just starting. Don’t worry, it’ll start feeling good soon.”

He pulled out and paused a moment, and when I felt him again his finger was slicker, colder, and he slipped into me with ease this time, causing an undignified yelp to pass my lips. I had dated a boy before, eons ago now, and we fooled around a bit but we never quite got this far...

Akechi’s finger teased me, and the more he moved around, the more I reacted. My voice slipped out against my will, small little gasps as I strained against the handcuffs, muscles in my back cramping, knees scuffing the floor, his a hand on my hip holding me steady. I was open and exposed at the hands of my enemy, while he violated my deepest places, and it felt _amazing_.

Akechi moved inside in a way that made my breath catch in my throat and my toes curl in pleasure, and I cried out, whole body jerking.

“Haha, there we go.” He moved his finger against that spot and it made me moan and shudder. “Is that where you feel good, Joker?” When I didn’t answer, he jostled my head, grinding my nose into the floor painfully. I was getting a little sick of that, and pressed the lockpick into my palm. I could turn this around any second. _But I’m not… why?_ “If you don’t tell me what feels good, I may hurt you, instead.”

“It... feels good.”

“Tell me you want it, then.”

I clenched my jaw. Dammit. He was doing what I had been trying earlier, and he was winning.

I _did_ want it, but I was already making more noise than Akechi had. After realizing I was losing, I started to get mad. So instead of truthfully admitting I wanted more, I said, “Bite me.”

Teeth sank sharply into my hip.

“Aah!” It hurt, and I flinched, but the movement pushed me back against Akechi’s finger buried inside me, which gave me another rush of pleasure, and it made my back spasm, but now the pain was blending with the sensation, and it was a whole new level I’d never experienced before. The good and the hurt blurred my vision and made me go weak. Shit, was I a masochist?

“Well, well. Fiesty, aren’t you?” His fingers flexed and I couldn’t help but moan. “Don’t fight me, Joker. We both want the same thing, don’t we?” His voice was sickly sweet. “If you’re good, I can make you feel so much better.”

I was practically panting. Did we really want the same thing? Akechi wanted to use me. Maybe I wanted to use him. I had to distract him so I could escape, but the pain in my back and the ache between my legs needed attention, too. Dammit. If Akechi kept teasing me like this, I’d go mad.

I decided to submit to him, for now. Until I could take my victory.

“Now tell me what you want.”

“I... want you to keep touching me there.” The helplessness in my voice surprised me, but at least it worked in my favor.

“Here?” And again, a shiver of pleasure shot up my spine.

“Yes!”

“Do you want more?”

I bit my lip. _He’s gonna make me say it?_ “...I want more, Akechi.”

He pulled his finger out, and it made my body scream with need. He still wouldn’t let me turn my head, but I felt that large pressure against me again. Again it felt... slick, and when he pressed it against me, it slipped in with almost no pain. The way it pushed me open and rubbed against my inner walls was so much more intense, I sighed with quivering breath.

“Ah, so you feel this too?”

“What is it? It feels... good.”

“A little experiment, an object of my own cognition. You’re doing well, changing my perception of you. Here.” He released his grip on my head and helped me sit up on my knees, ass still full. “Look.”

The room around us had changed. We were no longer in the theatre from before. His Palace, or at least the area around us, had become a bedroom, and we were on a bed I could only think of as “orgy-sized”. I saw racks and shelves with questionable items on them... whips, chains, chairs with holes in suspicious places. So this was what he was in to. I glanced down and noticed the remnants of my clothes had also disappeared. So, I was not a threat anymore... a prisoner? A sex slave? I squeezed my hand around the lockpick again, and the sharp press of comforted me. At least I still had this.

“You’re a kinky bastard.”

He wrapped an arm around my neck. “Don’t worry. We’ll have a lot of fun, here.”

He shoved me back down and pushed the- yeah, the dildo- deeper inside me. The pressure filled me, stretched me, rubbed against me so strange but amazing, and the sensations were enough to black out my brain. It was so intense, yet I craved more. I backed my hips into his thrusts, pushing as far as I could go until I could hit that spot Akechi found earlier, and once I found it I couldn’t hide anymore. Didn’t even want to. The pleasure racked my brain harder than any Shadow’s Marin Karin or Psiodyne, and when I let myself admit it, the floodgates opened. My voice got wild, and I bit the bedsheet below me. My whole body tensed with every thrust, but I made one involuntary jerking motion and wrenched my back again and my muscles had enough, spasming and locking down until I almost screamed. I couldn’t handle this anymore.

“Akechi,” My voice was muffled by the mattress and thick with feeling, but still shockingly weak and keening high. “The handcuffs. My shoulders.”

He froze suddenly, and I wished I could see his expression. “Are you in pain?”

I nodded.

The cruelty in his voice astounded me. “Good.”

He flipped me onto my back and continued to fuck me with the toy, and the pain from my back mixed with the pleasure from my backside, forming two diametric oppositions in my skull. _It hurts! But it feels so good! It_ _ **hurts!**_ _Do it again!_ A stupid thought flitted across my mind – _Hegel would have never thought of a dialectic like this._

Akechi stared hungrily into my eyes, wanting to see my pain-filled expression. It was sick, and yet I couldn’t break eye contact. His eyes penetrated me just as much as the toy. He looked deranged and wild, and something about those eyes, normally so controlled, so reserved, finally unleashed, the depths of his soul bared in his maddened expression, just fed the well of pleasure building in the pit of my gut. _I got him this worked. He is like because of me._

I was almost at my limit. I needed relief somehow. My back was cramped so hard I wasn’t sure if I would ever move again, and my cock was straining against my belly, desperate for attention, but I had nothing to move it against. As I cried and screamed Akechi’s name, my hands worked on their own, trying to maneuver the lockpick wedged between my body and the bed. Trying to secretly pick your own handcuffs while being aggressively penetrated, over and over, was not the most ideal circumstance, but desperation made me especially skilled, and I worked the handcuffs off enough to move my arms and finally relieve the spasms in my back.

With my hands free, the feeling of power rushed back through me. I was done being at Akechi’s mercy.

Seeing the change in my expression, Akechi stopped, roughly pulling the toy free.

“I don’t trust that smile of yours.”

Was I smiling? I suppose I was. Akechi no longer had a weapon in sight that I saw\- in fact, he was also naked. “You shouldn’t trust me. I’m your enemy, remember?”

I leapt up and pushed Akechi down on his back, flicking the handcuffs over his own wrists and pinning them over his head. His betrayal-filled expression made me laugh.

“You really should pay more attention.” I rolled the lockpick between my fingers, pretending like my muscles weren’t still aching and my cock still hungry standing at attention. “I tricked you.” He actually came frightfully close to having me utterly at his mercy… a worthy opponent.

“These handcuffs were my cognition, Joker. Do you think they will hold me? And we’re still in my Palace.” I braced for a moment, but nothing happened. Akechi demonstrated astounding control over his Palace, but it was still based in cognition. I surprised him well enough that he couldn’t just _think_ his way free. The realization hit us at the same time.

“I exist to be caught by you,” I said quietly, “but in the end, maybe you know you can’t win?” I reached out to touch his face, but he furiously pulled away. In a flash, I wanted to know what drove Akechi to be like this. What could I do to fix him? Could we find and steal his Treasure, heal his broken psyche? But the rage in his face as he struggled against me, the way he was guarding his own Palace, made me doubt. With such distortion between his real self and his mask, I was amazed he could hold a Persona at all. It questioned everything we knew about Personas. I also wondered what else he may have been hiding from us.

I knew I needed to escape. With Akechi in handcuffs, it would have been the best time. But… we were still naked, in a bedroom. And even I didn’t think I could fight my way out of a Palace in the nude, Persona or no. And I couldn’t leave Akechi trapped in his own Palace, either.

“Let’s make a deal, Akechi.” I found myself saying. “Let’s finish what we started. Then we both walk away.”

Akechi’s eyes were huge. “What are you talking about?”

“I’m talking about _this_.” I reached my hand behind me and lightly stroked Akechi’s still-erect member. “And _this._ ” With my free hand, I touched myself. It gave me goosebumps to finally touch myself. “We can’t just leave each other like this.”

“...you’re a fool if you want to stay here.”

“And you’re a fool for ending up in your own handcuffs,” I answered smugly. Some part of me was screaming, furious that I was staying here, risking everything, just so I could get off. I convinced myself it was something about Akechi. That I wanted to know what made him like this. Why he felt this way. Why he wanted to betray us.

But really, more than anything, I just _really_ wanted to come.

Akechi was sprawled underneath me, and I felt his cock straining, faintly touching my backside. I kept one hand holding his handcuffed wrists down, and with the other I guided Akechi inside of me. Akechi’s expression shifted from confusion and hatred to shock as I slowly lowered myself onto him. Even with the teasing, the toy wasn’t as wide as him, and I strained to fit him all the way inside, taking deep breaths to force myself to relax the last few inches.

“You’re still going to take it?” Akechi asked, dumbfounded. His face, which had been twisted by horny rage a few minutes ago, now cute and almost flustered, actually made my chest feel warm. Wasn’t the begging I wanted, but _this,_ this soft Akechi under me, that was what I loved to see.

“You turned me on.” _Fuck,_ Akechi felt fantastic. Any restraint I may have had before (and it wasn’t much) vanished as I lowered myself harder onto Akechi’s dick, filling me so completely my breath hissed through my teeth. And when I lifted my hips and felt him slide roughly against my insides, I started to moan and didn’t bother trying to hide it.

“Joker...” Akechi’s voice was dark and honeyed. “You’re going to fuck yourself on me? You need it that bad?”

My jaw clenched and I rammed myself harder onto Akechi than I expected. He felt... huge, like I was splitting myself open. And it was not enough.

“You look so dirty, Joker. I certainly never could have imagined something like this.” He pushed against my grip on his wrists, and I was so focused on what I was doing I almost let him escape, but I grabbed the chain between the cuffs and kept him down. He chuckled and I swear I felt it vibrate inside of me. “Maybe I won’t kill you. If you can make yourself look like this, maybe I should try to just keep you here.”

 _Shit._ Something was _definitely_ wrong with me if that made me hornier. I liked being on top, controlling how fast, how hard Akechi moved inside of me. He wasn’t even trying to take control from me this time, except for the weak attempt to free his hands. But now he was lying passively under me, and when I looked at his face, his eyes dug into me hungrily. I couldn’t look at him for long. And when he spoke, that dark, quiet, eerily calm voice filled with hunger drove me further, wanting more, like there was an ache somewhere deep inside I was trying to fill with cock.

I moved hard enough to hear a wet smacking of flesh on flesh punctuated by my own moans. I rolled my hips and thrust downward until I felt _that_ spot and it nearly brought tears to my eyes. I steadied myself with a free hand Akechi’s chest and really focused there, moving so hard I thought I might break.

“You sound close already Joker, but I haven’t even touched there.” His eyes were fixed on my erection. “Aren’t you going to take care of that? Or can you climax without any touching?” He fought my grip again, and I barely managed to keep him down. What would happen if I just let him free...? “I want to see you do it to yourself, Joker.” His husky voice filled me just as much as his dick. “Grind on my cock and touch yourself until you come.”

I wanted that more than anything right now, but Akechi _telling_ me to do it gave me that confusing feeling of arousal and resistance. I wanted to give in. I wanted to resist him. But I was too aroused, too close to fight. What would I lose? Why would I care? Relief hung just before me, and it was getting harder to even see straight, let alone think.

Still balancing on Akechi’s chest, I finally released his hands to grip my cock, and the wash of additional sensation made my whole body shudder. Even Akechi could feel it- his pectoral muscles clenched under my hand. Even he was breathing heavily now, and I wonder if he was feeling as strongly as I was. I’d only been moving in ways that made me feel good, not really thinking about Akechi’s pleasure.

I pumped my hand up and down in time with my bouncing hips, and when I closed my eyes I could focus on just the feelings on both ends, the pulsing pressure stretching me out and the sensitive stimulation from my front. I heard my own throaty moans and Akechi’s hitched breath, but otherwise Akechi remained quiet. I felt his eyes on me still. I heard his breath catch as I changed my rhythm, moved my hand differently. He liked watching me. He _fe_ _lt_ me.

“Akechi,” I warned as I felt it building, a growing puddle of warmth and light in my belly slowly stretching to my groin, wanting to explode out of me. When I hit that spot inside I could feel it, just under the surface, growing stronger, brighter, until I had to clench my eyes closed, I couldn’t stop moving, my legs were getting sore and my back still ached and I was stroking my cock raw but I could _see_ it, feel it as Akechi’s hands grabbed my hips and he slammed himself in me once, twice, again and again until I let out my hoarse voice and that light spilled over and I came hot spurts that spread over Akechi’s chest, and I felt another warmth, twitching, desperate filling my ass as Akechi came too.

I collapsed over Akechi, my safety thrown to the wind as I took a moment to catch my breath, my enemy still buried balls-deep inside of me. It took a few minutes before my blurred vision cleared, and I remembered _Akechi shouldn’t have been able to grab me like that_ –

I grabbed for his shoulders but Akechi was already moving, wrapping his now-freed hands around my neck and trying to wrestle me down underneath him. I struggled with him, and his cock slipped lose and I felt his come run down the back of my legs, and when he flipped me on my back, my Phantom Thief outfit flared back over my body in a flash of harmless blue fire like it never left, except for the warm liquid now running down my thighs. The weight of the knife returned, resting snugly in its holster.

His brown eyes were wide and wild, pupils nearly swallowing the iris. “You think I’m going to let you go, after that? No, Joker... I think I’ll keep you here for a while.”

Without the distraction of a boner, I knew exactly how I was going to escape from there. “How long do you think you can keep me?” I asked sweetly. He had my shoulders but his face was close, and I strained upward to catch his lips in a kiss – the first kiss we’d shared after this whole debauched night. He opened to me immediately, tongue rolling in my mouth, and it created another warm, glowing pool of arousal in my belly, but I was in control now. As we kissed, my hand slipped into my inner coat pocket and found the smoke bomb Morgana helped me make last night.

“This was fun,” I whispered into Akechi’s mouth. “Let’s do it again sometime before we kill each other.”

I threw the bomb against the wall, immediately filling the room with smoke. In his surprise, Akechi released me, and I slipped away. His fantasy bedroom, as I suspected, shifted back to the original Palace, and it was easy to rush my way to the exit. I heard alarms being raised behind me, but I didn’t care- I hurled myself outside of Akechi’s Palace back into the real world, back in my school uniform.

I rushed back to Leblanc before Akechi could follow me out. I still felt the ache inside my body, and a drying stickiness all over me. I hoped the baths were empty.


	2. The Dialectic

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one is for all you sapiosexuals out there. Hopefully this doesn't come across as a load of nonsense.

After a stint in the near-unbearably hot baths and a dose of Takemi’s special medicine, I was just beginning to feel normal as I walked into my room. Then a small black cat nearly drew blood as he pounced on my shoulder.

“And where have you been?” Morgana asked, his anger an obvious attempt to hide concern. “You just left? _Without_ me?”

I was relieved that I had the forethought to be vague in the note I left him. All I wrote was that I was heading out and would be back soon. Although, if things had gone more deadly back there and I didn’t make it out, no one would know where I went…

I shook that thought away and tried to be calm. “I just went to the baths,” I lied easily, my hair still convincingly damp and especially curly. “I didn’t think I needed to wait for you to come back.”

“I thought you were asleep, that’s why I left,” he huffed, fur around his neck still ruffled.

“Sorry. I just felt like I needed a soak, and Boss doesn’t really have proper baths in here.”

He made a strange meow of frustration. “Then just write that next time! I nearly had a heart attack when you were gone.”

I felt pretty shitty about that, even more so that I was still lying about my whereabouts. “You would just miss me bringing you sushi,” I teased, trying to lighten the mood.

He turned his nose up at me and jumped down, heading towards the mattress stacked on crates that was my bed. “Not like you ever bring me the good stuff anyway,” he replied, and I felt a small weight off my chest. Forgiven, at least for the small and only transgression he was aware of.

For the next several days, I couldn’t stop thinking about what happened in Akechi’s Palace. (Hard quick breathless thoughts behind locked doors.) I flitted between shame at my recklessness, arousal at the forbidden danger of it all, more shame from the arousal, anxiety about telling the team what I found, and fear of Akechi’s reaction.

Luckily, our route to Sae’s Treasure was already secured, and we had a few weeks until we sent out the calling card. So no one realized that I was avoiding them, as there wasn’t much need to go to the Palace or train in Mementos. We had our plan for countering Akechi’s machinations, so now all that was left to do was wait. But this new factor called everything into question, and my dumb ass could have thrown that all in jeopardy just for a thrill ride.

I was tempted, so tempted, to see if what happened changed his cognition, but I dared not go back. I kept trying to tell myself that the others needed to hear about this Palace, that we needed to strategize on this new knowledge that Persona-users could have Palaces. I was still on the fence when I got a notification on chat shortly after school ended that Friday.

 **Akechi**  
“I have a bit of a philosophical quandary that I would appreciate your input in solving.”

I swallowed past lump in my throat as I replied.

 **Me**  
“You know I’m always down for more of that Master/Slave stuff.”

Sounded like something I would have said before, but when I saw the read receipt and several moments passed without typing bubbles, I began to sweat. Was that too risky? Should I stop flirting now or would he see through that sudden change? He used to playfully indulge a little light flirting, but without knowing if my ruse was successful, the rules of engagement had become a mine field.

After an agonizing length of time, during which I could not take my eyes off my phone (much to Morgana’s chagrin), I saw the response.

 **Akechi**  
“Cute. But it’s not Hegel this time. Something else. Jazz Gin tonight?”

Of course, that gave me nothing. But he wanted to meet in public at the jazz club. Nothing to worry about in a public venue… right?

 **Me** “You know they actually spell it Jazz Jin. See you there”

 **Akechi** “Their grasp of English is as poor as your history with the law.”

Ouch. Still, I couldn’t deny I was eager to meet him. It was risky if he suspected me, but I had to see how he reacted. Would he act different around me? Would he want to try to achieve his “fantasy” in the real world? Morgana rode the train with me to Kichijoji, hopefully unaware of my flurry of emotions. The whole trip, I wrestled with wanting to tell him, to let him know this might not be a typical social call- not that anything with Akechi ever ended up being typical. I kept willing myself to speak, but as we got nearer and nearer the station, the ability to summarize, in G-rated terms, what I discovered became less and less likely. And sure enough, I found myself walking to Jazz Jin, Morgana completely unaware we were going to meet another Palace-holder. In front of the shop, Morgana obligingly jumped from my bag and told me he’d meet up with me when we were done, giving me a pointed look before darting into an alley. 

Sure enough, Akechi was already there, early to everything as always, idly scrolling through his phone before he noticed me and put it away. He pinned a smile in place, an affect of warmth and openness that still managed to feel cold and distant. Like a mask from an old Greek play, Akechi donned the appearance of the archetypal friendly upholder of justice, but the look was hollow and unmoving.

“Ah, good to see you, Kurusu-san. Are you doing well? I appreciate you coming out to meet me.”

I re-hefted the now much lighter bag over my shoulder, trying to keep calm. Seeing Akechi in his usual winter uniform felt so much different now. As always, in his crisp black shoes, black slacks, brown overcoat buttoned all the way to the top, gloves and neatly done tie, I never realized how absolutely walled-off he looked, down to the gloves he seemed to wear every day. I had very rarely seen him in casual clothes. Near staring at him, I couldn’t help but overlay the last image I had of Akechi over this primly dressed stranger – naked, the outline of sweat-slicked muscles, the feel of warm flesh under and inside me, hair in disarray, eyes unfocused and wild with orgasmic rage, and I felt a shiver of warmth. “I’m doing great.”

“Good.” His smiled widened. “Shall we head inside? The signboard is advertising a live singer tonight, and I don’t want to miss it.”

I nodded and followed him down the stairs, subtly checking my cheeks to make sure they weren’t revealingly flushed.

We paid our fees and sat down, ordering the alcohol-free drink specials. I was relieved to see the Friday drink specials – they always left me feeling a little more lucky, and I could use all the help I could get tonight.

The room was dark as the singer set up her equipment, and Akechi didn’t immediately offer up the conundrum he called me here to help with. I quietly drank the cocktail and waited, wondering if my cover was blown, wondering what he had planned for tonight, and trying not to feel overly eager.

He waited until the room fell into a hush and the music began, letting the singer get several bars into the song before he quietly spoke. “I realize I have asked you many times to work through the hypotheticals of various philosophical ideologies and theories, but I have rarely asked for your true honest opinion on which you found most valid.”

Was this really all he wanted to discuss? “What, you mean like Hobbs versus Locke?”

He chuckled lowly. Was he sitting closer to me just to hear me better over the music? “Not so rigidly, no. There is a particular question raised in a book I read recently that I would like to hear your answer to.”

“Shoot.”

I saw a glimmer of teeth in his smile. “Here is the proposed scenario: Suppose you are given access to a book that contains, in specific and exacting detail, the entire course of your life. When you read it, you can see everything you have ever done in your past, everything you will do in the future, as well as everything you are doing right now, in the present, including reading the book itself. You learn a great tragedy will befall you if you do a specific action, one you had been planning on doing before you read the book. You see everything that will happen as a consequence of taking this action, some good, most of it bad, up until the end of your life. My question to you, Kurusu-san, is this: Would you try to change your fate?”

I considered the question very carefully. I learned early on that Akechi could see right through half-hearted discussions, and especially now, I was very interested to see if these discussions would shed more light on his plan. Any more information I could get before I offered myself as a sacrificial lamb. Besides, he always posed interesting intellectual challenges.

The thoughts rolled around in my mind for quite some time, and I was glad he picked a day with music. The singer’s calm, smooth voice helped me ease into meditation like at the nearby shrine, drowning out my anxieties about the coming days, my fear for my teammates, and the heat from Akechi’s body so close to mine.

It wasn’t until the song was over that I had my answer.

“No, I don’t think I would.” He didn’t respond, waiting for me to elaborate. I tried to organize my confusing mess of thoughts, purposefully looking away from him. “The scenario proposes that all future actions include knowledge I already had from the book, right? But that also means I can see the logical progression of what I did after reading the book. I was already planning to make my decision, and the book told me I did in fact make it. That doesn’t make me want to change my choice. The feelings I had about making that decision would still be there. Still be mine. Knowing the outcome wouldn’t necessarily make me want to try something different, something unknown. Even if the outcome is ultimately bad, you said some good still comes of it, right? Then maybe that good is worth it, in the end.”

Akechi held his chin in thought, and he took almost as long to say anything back to me. The singer nearly finished her second song. I emptied my whole cocktail before he spoke.

“I envy your ability to live without regrets, Kurusu-san.” His voice was flat. Uninterested. Like my answer bored him.Not what I expected. I thought he would challenge my perspective, drill it down, Socratically, until he reached the core of that belief and I lost track of what we were discussing.

“It’s not a life without regrets,” I found myself arguing. That took Akechi aback, and he titled his head curiously. “Of course I have regrets. All our actions have good and bad consequences. And of course I feel bad when I have to face those negative consequences. But even with regrets, I don’t think that means I would change anything. Change would just give me different regrets.”

He suppressed a chuckle and shook his head at me, light of debate sparking in his eyes. “So you are willing to be a prisoner of fate? If you knew what you knew now, you wouldn’t stop yourself from saving that woman?”

My mind flashed back to the worst day of my life. The way that woman screamed still gave me nightmares. “No,” I say definitively.

“Even though you were arrested? Even though she lied and let you take the fall? Even though you lost your school, your family abandoned you here, with your reputation ruined?”

“At least she’s safe.”

“Is she?” His brown eyes gleamed in the low light, and he leaned closer to me. My mouth grew dry despite having just finished my drink. This was more like what I expected. What I wanted. “You don’t know that. How do you know he didn’t just hurt her later, after you were removed?”

“Maybe. But that night, that moment, I know I helped. It’s the story of the boy throwing starfish back in the ocean. He can’t save all the starfish, but he can make a difference for at least one.” I felt like I was rambling, but Akechi nodded knowingly.

“I should have expected such a noble answer,” he said, and did I detect a bit of a sneer there? His voice dropped lower, almost unintelligible. “Still, considering your after school activities, I am surprised you would accept your fate so readily. Where is that rebel’s soul?”

My throat tightened. “I don’t believe it is fate in that book.” I whisper back hoarsely. “That book could have all my choices in life in paper, written before I made them, but that doesn’t mean I didn’t _choose_ to make them in that moment.”

“And I already know your stance on changing your mind just to spite the gods. So. To you, the book is not fate to be fought against, just a record of decisions you made freely?”

“If it seems to be the right thing to do in that moment, who cares what some book says. My decisions are still made then, and I have to live with it.”

He laughed and I felt it on my lips. I don’t know why, but I felt like Igor, that strange creature of nightmare and cognition, would have some interesting and nonsense things to say about my being a “prisoner of fate” that I don’t really want to think about right now. “Fascinating. I am grateful you indulged my curiosities.” I only realized just then the music had been done for some time. Akechi and I didn’t have to be leaning in so close to each other.

Neither of us moved for several heartbeats.

“Then care to indulge mine?” I propped my elbow on the table and leaned into it, smiling at him casually to hide the storm in my chest. “What is your answer to that question?”

He returned my smile with a mysterious look. His lips were upturned but his eyes had a darkness to them. It reminded me a little of how he looked at me in his theatre. “Of course there are things I want to change. But even if I had such a book, there are certain things I could do nothing about.”

Taking a deep breath to steady myself, I stepped into unknown territory, heart hammering with excitement. “Like who your dad is?” It was the most personal thing he told me, and I wondered what kind of man his father could have been for Akechi, always polite, controlled Akechi, to have talked about him so derisively. I wanted to know. Had to know. Had to push him a little more.

He exhaled slowly, the smile slipping. “You know me too well, Joker.” It sounded like a threat. Something stirred in me that wasn’t fit for the public. “If there was one thing out of my control I would have liked to change, it would have been to meet you a few years earlier. How the book of my life would read after that!” He leaned close to me for a moment, and for a dizzying second I wondered if he was going to kiss me and I knew I would not be able to control myself.

But instead, he stood up, thanked me, and left Jazz Jin. I tried and failed not to be disappointed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The book to which Akechi is referring is a actually a novella: "Story of Your Life" by Ted Chiang. Really good sci-fi story, brings up some really interesting ideas. Also next chapter will be a short little selection of scenes going into the first ending, so I'll try to have that quickly so I can get onto some other fun stuff too


	3. Pensées

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one is a little different. Sorry if it's confusing, we're gonna jump through large sections of the game here.

_Akechi received the chat notification from Kurusu. It was time to meet and enter Sae-san's Palace. He stared at the boy's name longer than necessary before opening the phone and dialing the number of the lead of the task force responsible for the arrest. "We are going in tonight. Meet me at the designated spot. I will hand offmy phone so you have access to where the Phantom Thieves are going to be. It is simple enough to operate. Be ready within an hour after the handoff.”_ _He hung up. Tonight was the night_ _his_ _plan fell into place. Not much longer, now._

~*~

I ran as fast as I could through Sae’s Palace, exhilaration outweighing the terror that I knew awaited me below. Nothing beat the final days of a Palace infiltration. Slipping past Shadows, so lifelike at the lowest level of the casino that I wondered if they were the real deal. Didn’t matter. The ones with masks I ripped apart, and the ones in suits I slipped past with ease. Akechi picked a good time to try to take me down; I was at the height of my skills.

Futaba’s voice guided me as I stowed away the Treasure. A shame I wouldn’t actually be taking it. Flying over the heads of my pursuers with the grappling hook was equally as satisfying, however, even as I heard Akechi through Futaba’s connection warning me about being caught. I landed on the catwalk away from the enemy and sneered at the sound of his voice. _All this, because of you. I’m not going to make it easy._

Where was he right now? Slipping away from my friends to rejoin the police waiting for me somewhere? Maybe following me in the darkness? Strangely tempting to think so. I almost longed for one more one-on-one with him, fighting him one last time, just to prove I was worthy of being alive. Of being his enemy. She told me she kept sensing a weird signal near me. Was that him? She knew his signal by now, surely, the aura of his power, but maybe there was something else, some way he cloaked himself as he followed me, maybe to assassinate me right where my remains would never be found. God, it was thrilling.

But then I was surrounded. Furious. I would _not_ be taken out by common Shadows! Not here!

“ _Joker! That weird reading from earlier is closing in on you!_ ”

My heart jumped into my throat. Could it be…? Was he…?

“I’ll end this right now.”

I saw the silhouette of her dark coat, so much like mine somehow. Strange, how much it hurt. It wasn’t him.

~*~

_Kurusu had been captured, as planned. Everything was as he planned. He took great glee in thinking of him in that interrogation room, the pain he must be in. Helpless. All his. Maybe he could have some more fun with him, too._

_He easily dodged past Sae’s inquiries and strange behavior. Whatever he had told her, it wouldn’t save him. That woman had no power here._

_The guard was such a fool, so trusting, that he managed to grab the gun and attach the silencer before either he or Kurusu could react. Akechi’s hand_ _remained steady as the barrel smoked and the guard fell lifeless to the ground._

“ _I owe you for all this. Thanks.” He said to Kurusu. He waited to see some spark from his rival, some flicker of that strange anticipatory glare he so often_ _gave_ _Akechi. The look that was all at once hungry and_ _rebellious_ _, that drove him crazy in his fantasies. But instead, he looked scared. Clearly, he knew he had lost. And yet, Akechi felt a strange sense of loss. Was this truly the best Kurusu could do? He expected some kind of fight. But he sat there, wide-eyed, pupils quivering. Was his rival so easily beaten?_

 _Nothing Akechi said_ _got a reaction from_ _him. He still looked scared, but he stayed still, head held high. He had to admire him that, at least._

 _He hesitated when he held the barrel to his forehead. All too like the last time he held his gun to Kurusu._ _Except this time_ _he_ _could_ _enjoy_ _his face in full detail. But this… wasn’t the same expression. This Kurusu knew he was going to die. The last expression on his face was one of fear and surrender._

_Akechi shot him dead and left._

_He remembered what happened weeks ago at_ _his_ _Palace. Of course he had. Yet he had never encountered the Thief again, no matter how often he returned. It frustrated him. It was a missing puzzle piece, an_ _unused_ _card in the deck._

_A joker._

~*~

I only visited his Palace once more, secretly, briefly, while I was “dead.”

~*~

_It was quiet now. Dark. The preposterous posters had all been torn down. The imagined audience no longer lined up for the show._

_Akechi stormed inside to see his Shadow sitting upon the stage, lit by a single spotlight and still in that foppish director outfit, one leg balanced over his knee. He tapped an ornamental cane against his raised boot._

“ _The show is over,” his Shadow informed him. “What else is there to see?”_

“ _Our plans aren’t finished. We still have-”_

“ _Shido. I know.”_

_Speaking to himself like this was always infuriating, but a little solipsistic meditation helped him to see himself and his plans from an outsider’s perspective. See weaknesses, flaws, a chance to circumvent potential risks. But that also meant he had to deal with, well, himself._

_Akechi hated himself._

“ _You are the playwright,_ _as well as_ _the producer. I am a humble director trying to execute your vision.” He gestured with one hand to the empty stage and audience. “This is a reflection of your heart. I can have no play without players.”_

_Akechi felt that rage burn within him. The rage that gave birth to Loki, the rage of the black mask, the rage that he had lovingly cultivated ever since that bastard left, his mother died, and the world abandoned him. The rage that told him never get close, never let anyone hurt you again, hurt them first._

“ _Shido?”_

_The Shadow laughed merrily. “Oh, we both know he is not our plaything. He is our surly patron, the one whom we must entertain, else this whole establishment will crumble. And yet, we have no players. You have broken our toys. You have killed our star.”_

_A momentary panic flooded him. His Shadow actually sounded angry. Was he angry at himself? No._ _N_ _onsense. He had always planned this. This was not worth regret. “Where is Kurusu? Joker?”_

“ _As I said, they are both dead.”_

_Wait. “Both?”_

_A grin from his reflection. “Oh yes. You murdered the real Kurusu. Excellent job. So you perceive the real Kurusu is dead. No Kurusu, no Joker. All versions of him, real or imagined, are dead.”_

“ _So he… truly died.” He meant it like a question, but the finality sunk into his chest._

_The Director’s eyes twinkled. “What did you expect after shooting him in the head?”_

“ _Joker always_ _found_ _some way. After being falsely convicted, sent away to a new city, discovering this power, and everything we threw at him, he always found a way to survive. No,_ thrive. _I kept expecting… something. A last minute fight. Some clever ruse. But he just… sat there.”_

“ _Like a lamb.” The Shadow rolled the cane from one hand to the next. “My Akira was quite true to yours, wasn’t he? Lost little lamb.”_

_He hated the way he spoke about him. But what was this, jealousy? Of himself? Or annoyance at his Shadow’s clear affection for Kurusu?_

“ _And Joker? The thief?”_

“ _So true to reality, wouldn’t you say?_ _Masterful performance._ _”_

 _Akechi furrowed his brow, examining the empty, quiet theatre. So this_ _was_ _how it_ _felt_ _when the Master_ _overcame_ _the Slave. The Slave lives under oppression of the Master, but in so doing finds an individual reason to live, to self-actualize. Without the Slave, what is a Master?_

~*~

Hegel would have a fucking field day with this.

~*~

 _He’s alive?! He’s_ _**alive!** _

_Here. In Shido’s Palace. Trying to change his heart! Make him_ _**repent?** _ _Make him_ _**confess?!** _

_No. No, no, no no no nonono!_

_Akechi’s rage festered, boiled, frothed from his eyes at the sight of that white mask, those red gloves. He was here._

_Loki’s voice whispered in a soothing hiss, a beautiful distortion of his own. “Release thy rage. Release thy rage and kill him. Kill him.”_

_He summoned Loki, cast that personified rage back into himself, amplified, until all he could see was Joker, coated in red luster._

_~*~_

Akechi fired his shot past me, my breath caught in my throat. He wasn’t aiming for me after all. The emergency shutters!

The bulkhead slammed down between us, cutting me off from him. I hammered my fists into the barricade but it was no use. I yelled for his name.

“Always a flair for the dramatic.” I heard his voice weakly through the steel.

 _Akechi leaned against the metal, his mask cracked, his anger burned through. Like coming down from a hit of ecstasy, he had_ _exhausted_ _his rage until none was left, and he felt follow. All that was left were the regrets._

“ _Hey, let’s make a deal. Okay? You won’t say no, will you?”_

I felt tears burning behind my eyes. Why did it have to be like this…? He was a terrible person. Minutes ago, he was trying to kill me. He had killed Haru’s father, probably Futaba’s mom, countless others, but now… all I heard was a scared, smart, helpless Akechi, facing death proudly. Welcoming it. He was wrong. But he didn’t have to be.

His glove weighed down my pocket. I slipped my hand around it like Akechi’s hand filled it. No. It couldn’t end like this. It won’t. He had a Palace. He could be reformed. He could...

“ _I’ll hold on to your glove.”_

 _Joker’s promise broke something in_ _him_ _. The glove…? He still had it? Despite his injuries, Akechi had to laugh. What a thing to hold on to, in this moment. Joker really was… something._

_Quietly, so quiet he wasn’t sure Joker could hear him, he whispered, “That really was you in my Palace, wasn’t it?”_

I yanked my hand back from the steel wall like it burned. My memories from last month rocked me to my heels. God, what I wouldn’t give to put my arms around him one more time. After my initial shock, I pressed my forehead to the barricade. “How long have you known?”

_He laughed, then coughed. “I always knew, Joker. I’m not so clever as to devise such a brilliant rival as yourself.”_

Fuck, this bastard really was going to make me cry for him. “You perv.” I had to laugh, or else I was going to lose it in front of everyone. The red klaxon was still blaring. I knew we were running out of time. “I won’t fail.” I promised him. “After all, you’re the only one who can catch me. I’ll wait for you to defeat me some day.”

_Akechi smiled. “I can see the course of my life laid out in that book, Akira.” He called him by his first name for the first time. He wished he could see how he reacted. “And now I know what you mean. I won’t have regrets from this choice I’ve made. I would not change it, even if it means I have to die.”_

Gunshots. Futaba no longer sensed his vital signs. He was gone.

After stealing Shido’s treasure, all I could think about that night was Akechi. How much I wanted to see him, one last time.

~*~

_He was insulted that Akira would think so little of him. He would not die so easily._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Akechi is incapable of getting angry without also being a lil horny, huh


	4. Cogito Ergo Sum

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wanted to move this forward a little more, plot-wise, but uhh, porn got in the way.

Christmas Eve, alone. I guess I should have expected that. Especially these last few months, I’d been very concerned with being arrested, dying, coming back from the dead (twice), and saving the world. Not a lot of time for romance. Any time I did have for lascivious thoughts, they were turned toward a particular detective who wanted me dead. Also not great for romance.

I thought I might have had a chance with… no, but it was too late now. No point dwelling on what-ifs. I was in Shibuya, alone, waiting to meet a woman, but not for anything fun.

I met Sae outside the station and listened to her outrageous proposal. She wanted me to turn myself in. Testify against Shido. But we both knew that would have… consequences. The Phantom Thieves had caused such a stir in this country, in the world! We had shaken up the faith of the people to trust the establishment. We were practically insurrectionists. Even though we were just, even though there wasn’t a real crime I could think of us doing, I suddenly realized there was no way we could escape this totally free. My heart sank. In the end, after all I went through, I might still have to serve jail time. For what, having magic powers? But Sae made it clear that was the most likely outcome. The Phantom Thieves had caused chaos in Japan, and the powers that be would want to see _someone_ punished for it. I was never going to be the hero here. In the end, I was still a criminal.

“I’ll ask you once more,” Sae said. “I’d like you to turn yourself in to the police, of your own accord.”

If that’s what it took to take down Shido for good… I stuffed my hands in the pocket of my jeans and looked away. I remembered Akechi’s words, back in Shido’s Palace. _Change Shido’s heart… in my stead. End his crimes!_ We had changed his heart. But if we wanted this to end, to truly achieve justice for Japan, for the Phantom Thieves… and for Akechi, I would have to do it. What was one more arrest on my record, anyway?

Before I could speak, however, a familiar voice cut through the chatter of the crowd.

“There’s no need for that.”

It sounded like…

Akechi?

Walking up from behind me like he hadn’t been dead for a month. I couldn’t speak. I could barely move. He looked exactly the same. Same brown uniform, same gloves, same crisp black slacks. No scars, no injuries. Those doey brown eyes that looked so soft now, but could look so heated. He continued speaking to Sae like I wasn’t gaping at him. “If they get their hands on the perpetrator, there’ll be no need for him to turn himself in, no?”

“You’re… alive,” I breathed hoarsely. He smiled at me, a strangely warm smile, considering how we had left off.

“To think I’d see you surprised… Honestly, it’s pretty satisfying.” My gut clenched tightly. I had the strangest urge to hug him, my would-be murderer, my enemy. But now wasn’t the time. Wasn’t sure if there ever would be a time. When Sae spoke, I couldn’t take my eyes off him, didn’t even hear what she said. Akechi smiled at her and answered, but I was numb with relief and confusion. I wanted to touch him, make sure he was real. Was I dreaming?

“I assume that works for you?” He was looking at me expectantly.

What did he say? Wait, he would… “You’re turning yourself in?” Why would he do that? So I wouldn’t have to? My heart hurt when I realized what that meant. He was alive, and that was more a relief than I expected, but if he turned himself tonight… I probably wouldn’t get to see him again. Probably for a long time. Maybe ever.

What had gotten into him? Was he doing this to destroy his father like he always wanted, or was he… trying help me? His pleasant, neutral mask, that one I had seen removed only twice, was fixed firmly in place. Impossible to read. I almost wanted to tell him no. Through myself on the pyre so Akechi could… I don’t know, redeem himself? But as soon as I had the thought, I knew there was no way. I knew what he had done. To make up for his crimes, what he did to Haru, Futaba, countless others. Akechi murdered so many people, all in this doomed quest for revenge. It was only right he own up to his crimes… I just never thought I’d see the day he would willingly confess to it all.

Or that I would be crushed to see him go.

“It’s simply principle that I repay my debts.” He was looking square at me. Was this still a game? He must have had an angle he was playing. Or maybe… wait. He’d had a Palace. When we destroyed the God of Control, we destroyed everyone’s Palace, changed the heart of the masses. If Akechi was alive for all that, was his heart changed, too? Was he actually reformed?

And after another short bout of conversation, just like that, they were gone. Sae and… Akechi.

Through the mad rush of events that was Christmas and New Year’s, I didn’t have much time to think about Akechi. But New Year’s Eve, just a week later, after the parties had wound down and Morgana was curled up asleep on the corner of the bed, I allowed myself to think about him.

Akechi… was he in that interrogation room where I was held? The place he would have killed me? Or somewhere else in the courthouse? Was he explaining how the Metaverse worked? It would be especially hard to prove anything about that world now, to anyone who wasn’t aware. I hoped he was okay.

I slid my hand under my pillow and found Akechi’s glove there. I studied it in the dim light- simple black leather, crisp, worn but not cracked or damaged. Clean, neat, and utterly devoid of personality, like Akechi’s disguise as a Prince. I tried to fit it on my right hand, but Akechi’s hands must have been smaller than mine, and the glove was a little too tight, a bit restrictive. I imagined Akechi’s own hands would be too.

I fell back on the pillow face-down, hiding my face in shame. God, was I truly so desperate? I lifted my head slightly to glance at Morgana, still happily asleep at the foot of the bed. I was relieved to have him back, but…

I also wanted a little privacy.

Rolling to my side, I slid my tightly gloved hand casually past the waistband of my pajama pants and lightly palmed at myself, sighing quietly in the shiver of pleasure it brought. After everything I’d gone through the last few weeks, I just wanted a relaxing night to myself. The familiar touch of my own hand was made a little more electric, exciting, with the glove on. Even on the outside of my boxers, it felt different. Sensation in my hand dulled by the fabric, my grip altered, the feeling thicker, rougher, less like myself and more like...

I just kept thinking about Akechi. How he survived. What he’d been doing since Shido’s Palace. We barely made it out, with the Palace collapsing so suddenly after we got the treasure. Never figured that one out; was it a self-defense mechanism Shido had from using Wakaba’s research? Did Akechi somehow do it? And now, he was back, miraculously, probably sitting in a jail cell or interrogation room. Maybe being treated poorly, which I didn’t want to think about. Or maybe getting special favors from Sae, his former co-worker.

That night in his Palace always featured prominently when I found the privacy to fantasize like this. I focused on his eyes. How he looked like he wanted to own every part of me. The way he hardly made a noise no matter what I did. The feel of his skin--

My messenger app beeped. I made a face and pulled my hand away, considered ignoring it, then decided it could be one of my friends, trying to set a date for after New Year’s. Using my ungloved left hand, I opened the app.

 **Akechi** “Happy New Year.”

My face went hot. My hand slid back between my legs as I stared at his name. I remembered being arrested. They took all my personal possessions, kept me in a jail cell. My parents paid bail, then it was court dates, hearings, paperwork. It took time. I hadn’t been free since that moment. Did he make bail somehow? Did they even offer it? And why this message? What did it mean? I waited for several minutes, but he didn’t say anything back.

“What are you trying to do to me,” I muttered in the dark. I typed out two quick messages.

 **Me** “Funny, I was just thinking about you”

 **Me** “I thought you were locked up.”

Under the covers, My fingers traced the curve of my gradually hardening cock, teasing myself. God, what was I doing. It didn’t take long for an answer.

 **Akechi** “Seems they don’t need me anymore.”

What did that mean? How could they not? Was the Metaverse not good enough testimony? I started writing some questions when I saw the typing bubbles reappear. I paused.

 **Akechi** “What were you thinking about?”

I grabbed myself a little harder, thumb grazing over the tip through a thin layer of fabric and glove. I bit my lip. I did say that as bait, to see what he’d make of it. And of course he took it, but now what did I want to do? Without seeing his expression and those _goddamn_ eyes, it was hard to know if the question was a flirt or sincere.

 **Me** “I already said, it was you”

 **Akechi** “Give me details.”

Shit, how explicit did he want? Without knowing if he was still in a lockup or being monitored, it could go badly for him.

 **Me** “NSFW.”

A few minutes passed as I kept half-heartedly playing with myself, watching the screen, the typing bubbles appear and vanish, conflict in my chest. We weren’t dating or anything. We were enemies. We fucked once, while I was disguised, and he apparently allowed himself to be tricked. Was that it? Was there something, anything, even possible between us? If so, I doubted it would ever be a functional, supportive something. But those thoughts of blissful relationships couldn’t hold a candle to teenage hormones and the promise of getting a little exciting solo action.

 **Akechi** “Call me. Let me hear it.”

My heart began to quicken. Call him? Hear it? What was… I swallowed, mouth dry.

 **Me** “Morgana’s asleep nearby. Can’t wake him”

 **Akechi** “Then don’t wake him.”

Oh shit.

Heart hammering in my ears, I dialed his number. He answered during the first ring, but didn’t say anything. Fuck. I curled tighter into a little ball, letting my gloved hand slip into my underwear to touch my raw cock. The leather was harsh and rough on the sensitive skin but at that moment it was what I wanted. I let myself sigh into the phone, allowing small, quiet grunts and gasps as I worked myself with one hand. Closing my eyes, I imagined Akechi being in the room, on the couch across from my bed, watching me. I pictured those eyes boring into me, staring at me with that hunger, that hateful fire.

“Goro.” His name escaped my lips easily, less than a whisper.

“How does it feel, Akira?” Hearing his voice, tinny through the phone, saying my name, it made my whole body shudder. The leather of the glove chafed, but I fingered the tip and worked a little precum into my palm. It wasn’t nearly enough, but not like I could buy any lube in Shinjuku- I was suspicious enough, there.

“Fuck.”I hissed in response, not sure how much I could talk without waking Morgana. I shot him a glance. He hadn’t moved, so I figured I was safe, but this would be… more than a little weird if he noticed.

Now I was really hard. I altered my grip towards the base, shorter, harder strokes to lessen the friction from the glove, letting myself make more little whimpers than I might normally allow myself.

Akechi chuckled and my spine bucked. “Now you perform for me in reality. As Nietzsche described, the Dionysian to my Apollonian. ”

Tears felt like they wanted to burst from my eyes. Something about sharing this moment with Akechi, right now, it was almost too much. Too complicated. I couldn’t let myself think about what I felt growing between us while something else was growing faster in my hands.

“Keep talking,” I implored fervently.

Another little low chuckle. I could picture the smirk he must have. “Are you close already, Akira? Is my voice really that tempting for you? You should think about what we could do if we were together.” I bit my bottom lip so hard I tasted copper. A low string of fricative _ffff_ s stretched out of my throat, never quite forming the word _fuck._ “My hands on your skin again. Maybe on your throat. No tricks this time. No trying to escape. Just me and you. Up next to you. Beside you. On you. _In_ you. Over and over again till your voice is gone and your soul is mine.”

I flipped onto my knees so I could bury my face in the pillow and moan and sigh as I came in my underwear, with the phone next to me so he could still hear. My legs and arms were trembling as I rode out the waves of the orgasm- one, two, and a shuddering third until I was spent, sore, my cock now sated but aching. I breathed heavily until my vision cleared and my body slowly sunk back into the stiff but familiar embrace of my mattress. I didn’t even realize Akechi was still on the line until I heard him.

“I will see you soon, Joker.”


	5. The Phenomenal World

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for rehashing some of the regular plot stuff but honestly all these Akechi scenes are so gay I couldn't stop myself.

I should have known that a reality that allowed Akechi Goro to walk free would be a broken one.

New Year’s Day was a perfectly wonderful day. Eerily perfect. To the point my friends were talking about things that didn’t seem real. Hadn’t Ryuji accepted the fact he would never be on the track team again? And didn’t Shiho move away? And Futaba… talked about shopping with her mother, which should only have been possible if they bought that kimono when she was still a child. Plus, I didn’t see Morgana all day. Like the first step into an unknown Palace, I immediately went into observation mode. What secrets were here for me to discover? What dangers lay hidden past the facade? And above all else, I couldn’t forget the overwhelming, dissonant feeling of _wrongness._

That feeling was confirmed when I woke up the next day with a strange man in my bed.

I felt damp, hot breath on my face, and with just one foot out of dreamland, I imagined someone else was sleeping beside me. Curling into the warmth, I threw one arm around the figure and instantly knew it wasn’t who I had been dreaming about. The shoulder was too wide, muscles too hard, and it didn’t smell like him...

I shot out of bed with a yelp and saw the stranger from the cafe yawn and rub his electric blue eyes. “Hmm…? What’s up?”

I mean, he was attractive, don’t get me wrong… but that wasn’t the point! I _definitely_ hadn’t gone to bed with anyone last night! “Who are you?” I demanded. But he just sat up and smiled at me, looking slightly worried.

“Who am I? What are you talking about?” He just laughed. “Man, you’re acting weird.”

My alarm bells were already blaring before I got called downstairs. I cautiously back down the steps, grabbing a change of clothes and pulling on a fresh shirt and trousers on the landing. I didn’t care if a customer saw.  But as I turned to head into the cafe proper, I saw… Futaba’s mom. A woman I had only seen in Futaba’s Palace, her face twisted in rage as a chimeric sphinx, was sitting with Sojiro, talking casually, flirtatiously even. I could barely speak. There was just… no way. The young man came downstairs shortly too, brushing past me with ease, and he was welcomed by the impossible pair. And when they called him Mona…

Mona. Morgana. My not-a-cat had a human body, just out of nowhere, and a dead woman was friends with him. They all sat happily together, chatting, laughing, a typical day. I was dizzy. I sat at the bar and drank Sojiro’s strongest coffee like it would wake me up, help everything make sense again. My stomach churned. This was wrong. Everything was wonderfully, perfectly wrong.

When the bell to Leblanc jingled, I wasn’t sure I could take another surprise. And then Akechi walked into the shop. Akechi, who still wasn’t in jail despite the events of a week prior. I hated to admit it, but I was relieved to see him. Amid all this weirdness, he was the familiar kind of strange. He looked so good in that smart sweater, brown coat, and gloves- always gloves. One look at his face when he noticed Wakaba, and I knew. He felt it too. But then it was gone, a pleasant mask once again as he addressed Sojiro.

“My apologies! I just need to speak with Akira-kun for a moment.” Hearing him use an honorific with my name when just two nights ago we _definitely_ weren’t on honorific basis was almost as jarring as waking up with a human Morgana snuggled up beside me. He approached me and I swallowed, a little overwhelmed to be this close to Akechi again.

“You know, don’t you?” His voice had dropped an octave to that dark, sultry tone I had only heard his most heated moments. Despite myself, despite all the uncanny valley perfection of this new reality, it made my breath catch to hear it from him so directly, in person, without a mask. “We have to discuss this.”

“Do you know what’s going on?” I asked in a whisper.

“That’s what I need to discuss with you.” His eyes held a razor-sharp focus, a bit of anger creeping into his voice, frustrated I was questioning him instead of just obeying. “Come on.”

I followed him out, the sound of Sojiro laughing with Morgana, of Futaba’s dead mother’s snide quips at my back. The bell of Leblanc rang as merrily as ever as the door closed behind me. Akechi quickly marched to the laundromat, which was almost always empty, and I followed. He looked at me accusingly.

“Well then,” he started, his voice distractingly hot, “let’s try to sort through this situation.”

“Do you know what’s going on here?”

“Let’s go over the facts. Last year, I turned myself in to the police as the perpetrator of the psychotic breakdown incidents. You remember?”

“Of course I do. But how did you survive Shido’s Palace?” It had been bothering me ever since Christmas Eve. Escaping that situation seemed like a miracle, like… like a wish come true.

He rolled his eyes. “We have far greater things to worry about right now than that. I’m actually insulted you think so little of me to assume I died back there.”

“I’m just glad you’re alive.” I caught the way his Adam’s apple bobbed just a little, the only flicker of reaction. It felt good to say it, better to see that little falter.

“The most confusing part of my story comes post-detainment,” he continued without a beat. “Obviously, I was thoroughly interrogated about my involvement in Shido’s case. But for some reason, after questioning, I was suddenly released. No explanation whatsoever.”

“So that’s when you-” his eyes hardened and he held up a hand to shut me up. Okay, I got it, not the time to talk about masturbating to the sound of his voice.

“Regardless, such a release is extremely unusual. I may have been cooperating, but they knew the extent of my crimes. To release a confessing suspect with no restriction should not even be allowed. But now it’s your turn. What happened after we… parted ways in Shido’s Palace?”

I rubbed the back of my neck and tried to think. Well, we changed Shido’s heart. And then… we got to the heart of Mementos. We saw the prisoners therein, and the Holy Grail. We failed to steal it. Mementos fused with the real world. A creature of my dreams turned into an evil god and tried to take over the world. And then we killed it. The world seemed to go back to normal after that.

Despite how outrageous it sounded, Akechi nodded along like it made perfect sense. He offered no explanation of his experiences during that time. “So the most glaring changes happened after the new year. And everyone, except for the two of us, are living in this altered reality unaware. Even though these changes are monumental. To me, the most unusual thing is--”

“Futaba’s mother,” I breathed. “Morgana, too. Waking up with an entire human man in my bed was a little more than a shock.”

Finally, I saw a crack in that hard expression, a sliver of bemusement cresting his brow.

“As opposed to…” he shook his head, and the scowl returned. “No, but Isshiki Wakaba coming back to life is certainly the most jarring thing I have seen so far. For the time being, you and I seem to be the only ones still in our right frames of mind.”

Considering how often I felt compelled to make a pass at Akechi even as the dead were coming back to life, I had to question that just a little.

“Let’s make a deal,” he said with a sly grin. I loved that face. The face of a planner, of a schemer, of a brilliant detective with his sight set on prey. “What do you say we join forces?”

With no real door on the laundromat, the room was as cold inside as out. Every time we spoke, fog formed at our lips. Akechi’s cheeks were slightly pink. “And do what?”

“Investigate, of course. I may have been posing to be a detective, but I still know the procedures of solving a mystery. And this is by far the biggest mystery I have encountered. You wish to find out too, don’t you? With everything that is going on, it would benefit us both to partner up.”

That, I couldn’t deny. He put a hand on his hip as he awaited my answer, taking an arrogant pose. Futaba’s mother. Morgana. Ryuji, Ann, everyone else, something was happening to them, and I needed to find out. And Akechi, I hated to admit, could probably outsmart any of us one-on-one, maybe even Makoto. I needed to focus on them first, but to do that,I needed him on my side. I needed him…

I stared at Akechi, weight shifted to one foot, still dressed so neatly, so properly, despite technically being a criminal on the loose. Those eyes boring into me, just like I had imagined back in my room a few nights ago. “I agree. Partner.” I closed the distance between us with one long stride, not allowing myself to think, grabbed that primly tucked white shirt collar and kissed him.

He froze, even as his lips warmed under mine. I sighed into his mouth. It had been so long.

But before he could kiss me back (or, maybe more realistically, punch me in the face), my phone rang. Akechi shoved me back with an open palm strike to my shoulder, pupils wide and cheeks a little pinker, and said with a hiss, “Answer it.”

Dazed, I did, and I heard Kasumi’s normally calm, upbeat voice threaded with concern and the beginnings of panic. I listened as she described seeing something like a Palace in Odaiba, where she first awoke to her Persona. Akechi held his chin and stared intently at a blank wall, avoiding my eyes. She asked me to come down there, and I told her I’d be there soon. When I ended the call, Akechi spoke without looking at me.

“That was Yoshizawa-san, wasn’t it?” His voice was short and clipped. Angry. He was… angry with me. “And she said something about a Palace? In the real world? I’m going with you.” And just like that, he left. Okay. So we weren’t kissing friends yet. Noted.

~*~

Meeting Kasumi in Odaiba sure was… something. I could see the strange, faintly shimmering outline of an otherworldly building like the Palace we accidentally fell in so long ago. Akechi didn’t bother to wear his polite disguise around her- it must have been a shock for Kasumi to see him so snappy and acerbic when she only knew the man as the Detective Prince. And then, when we went in the Palace…

Akechi’s head was almost entirely swallowed by the black helmet, devil horns curling past his temples and red glass over his eyes. And honestly… that tight-fitting blue and black striped suit made his legs and ass look amazing. I looked over the whole ensemble with the appreciative eye I could now afford since he wasn’t trying to murder me in psychopathic rage. In my own Joker getup, I felt emboldened to give him an obvious once-over, grinning.

“Oh look, your true outfit.”

Surprisingly, he returned my smile, stretching out his arms to better display his form. So no kissing, but flirting was still on the table. I could work with that. “What, this old thing? Well, Yoshizawa-san aside, there’s no reason for me to uphold the pretense of a sincere and righteous Detective Prince.”

If Kasumi wasn’t there, I might have jumped him right then. For most of our foray into this new and dangerous place, I couldn’t stop thinking about how I could get those clothes off him.

~*~

I almost felt proud of Akechi for finally unleashing his unfiltered, bloodthirsty self. It clearly unnerved poor Kasumi, but it was actually a relief for me to see that rage channeled not at me for once. And even more so, the fact he served a decent support role in combat, ordering and planning and directing our strikes, even when he summoned Loki and blasted enemies away with a single powerful Megidolaon. It was actually amazing, and I couldn’t help but be impressed at my assassin. One minute he was cackling uproariously at an enemy swallowed by the dark curse of his Eigaon, the next he was curtly and calmly calling the order for an all-out attack. 

He reminded me of me, actually. When I first awoke to Ars è ne, the rage inside me exploded in blood and fire , and with his power I felt unstoppable. Working as a Phantom  Thief provided me a healthier outlet for my rage, channeling it into stopping bad guys. In Akechi, I saw a rage without a target, without dampening, happy to direct it at anyone o r anything in his way. I knew Shido was the cause, just like Shido was the  beginning of mine. Again, I wondered if there was something in Akechi that could be saved, if I could… if  _something_ could smooth out the hardest edges of that hatred.

We explored the Palace carefully. Akechi, I had worked with before, so I at least knew he could hold his own, but Kasumi was untested. A strong Persona, but new to the ways of Palaces and fighting. With only the three of us, it was hard making it through.

But then, we met the Palace’s ruler… I shouldn’t have been surprised to see Dr. Maruki, and yet, I was. Ever the idealist, he somehow gained the power to make a true utopia, free of pain, like we had discussed. I never imagined his research would turn out so literal.

And Kasumi… no. Not Kasumi. Seeing _Sumire’s_ trauma played for us like a movie, the sound of her agonized screams…

We lost her to her pain. Despite Jose’s star granting us a powerful combo attack, Akechi and I were in no shape to save her. Yet still, Maruki seemed reluctant to fight us. It was probably the only reason we escaped.

This was bad. Very, very bad. If he had this kind if power… the God of Control could make people numb to his will, the Slaves to his Master. But if Maruki could be their savior… _actually_ create a world without pain… how could we stop something like that? Physically, or morally?

Akechi and I parted warily, with plans to return next week. Maruki had said my friends were already enjoying this realty, and from what I had seen, he was probably right. I had to check on everyone.

Using the week Maruki gave us, I visited each of my friends and saw the depths of Maruki’s power. From something simple, like reinstating Ryuji on the track team, reuniting Ann with Shiho, and placing Yusuke back into the care of Madarame, he had also done so many impossibilities. Bringing Futaba’s mother, Haru’s father, and Makoto’s father back from the dead, giving Morgana a body… how could we compete with such power? Everyone seemed… so happy. And this world did, indeed, seem to be real. Not a trick or illusion, but a wholly changed timeline. It felt sick to rip away my friend’s wishes. Especially after everyone acted so upset at the mere suggestion that this wasn’t right.

Akechi did not like my hesitation. He called me the day before our deadline to rescue Sumire, and when he asked me about my team… I didn’t know what to do. They were living their dream lives. They were so happy.

“He has rewritten the stories of their lives,” he told me in that quiet, calm voice I had learned was annoyance. His voice, his true voice, washed of the veneer of kindness and false charm, had such a different cadence, different inflections and intonations. I didn’t always know how to read the tone of his new voice, but I enjoyed listening to him, unraveling this new puzzle he didn’t even realize he had given me. His voice gave me pleasant tingles even as he lost patience with me. “You said yourself you would not attempt to alter what you read in the book of your life, didn’t you? And yet, you are okay with Maruki altering theirs?”

I held my head in one hand, my phone in the other. Morgana slept on the couch so peacefully. I could barely look at him. “But these are _their_ wishes. They have a chance to live a life they wanted, free of the outside influences that made their lives hell. The Phantom Thieves are dedicated to helping people in the same way, through the powers we were given. Didn’t Kant say that _if you ought, you can_? If Maruki has the power to improve people’s lives- no, improve their very existence, then according to Kant, doesn’t that mean he _should?_ If he _can_ make a better reality, then he _should_ , just like we did as Phantom Thieves. We changed people’s hearts, and Maruki is doing the same. How can I say he’s wrong?”

“Now you are quoting Kant and the categorical imperative? I should never have tutored you in philosophy.” Akechi scoffed. I didn’t mention that we discussed philosophy for his sake, not for mine. “Nonsense. Don’t forget Kant also said that each person is a rational, autonomous being who must make their decisions of their own free will. Maruki’s reality strips that autonomy from them and gives them what they think they desire. But if he had intervened like this earlier, if we were born in his perfect world, do you think you would have met these friends of yours? If no one suffered under Kamoshida, if Kitagawa was not used by Madarame as a mere means, they would not have needed the Phantom Thieves. You would never have met. By giving them this perfect reality, he is denying them the chance to freely decide their fates, for whatever good or ill comes of it.”

“But-”

He cut me off. “Well, let’s see if your decision changes when we face Maruki tomorrow. Remember that everyone deserves the chance to self-actualize, and not have actualization forced upon them.” Then the line went dead.

I fell back on the bed, covering my eyes with one arm. Getting lectured on Kant by the most perfect liar I had ever met, he must be rolling in his grave. Akechi was right, of course. That beautiful jerk was always right.

To think, even in Maruki’s perfect world, I still had such turmoil…

...but wait.

He granted the wishes of each of my friends, and seemingly everyone I saw on the streets. Everyone was so eerily happily all the time. But Maruki knew me pretty well by now, didn’t he? And yet… I knew the world had changed, when no one else did. Akechi too. Did we… not have a wish to grant? Did Maruki just… leave us alone?

The rest of the night, I was haunted by the realization I had been spared Maruki’s blessing. Or maybe, thinking back to New Year’s Eve, Akechi’s miraculous survival.... maybe I hadn’t.


	6. Eudaimonia

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Got another raunchy one today, folx.

Three weeks, give or take a few days. Three weeks until Maruki’s perfect world became permanent. I met with each of my friends to make sure they were okay with leaving their ideal realities aside, and I was so proud to see each and every one of them not only commit to changing Maruki’s heart, but even awaken to a _third_ Persona, showing just how thoroughly they were invested. Except for…

Akechi was strangely avoidant of me lately. He didn’t answer my texts, and when he saw me go into Penguin Sniper, he mocked me for wasting my time. And yet, if I called the group out for a round of darts or pool, he still showed up, mostly silent, but still there.

When we met at the hideout to discuss new requests, he sat in the furthest booth, or stayed by the bar while we crowded into the booths. But he still participated in the requests. As we drove around Mementos, especially in the strange new area Maruki unlocked, Akechi even chatted with the other Thieves, about riding bikes and other small casual things in his life that made me ache because he didn’t talk about those things with me.

During the little psychological test in Maruki’s Palace, I reveled in the moral and philosophical discussions about what choice we should make. It was my first glimpse of the Akechi I used to know, rapidly firing off quips about utilitarianism and Aristotelian virtues, and I saw his eyes literally gleam behind the red glass of the mask as we attempted a reverse-psychoanalysis. And yet, outside the Metaverse, Akechi was silent.

I finally got fed up and invited him to Jazz Jin the next time I saw him lurking in Kichijoji. I was a little surprised he didn’t put up an argument about it. Maybe disappointed, too.

In that cozy little underground club, we drank our cocktails and listened to music, and we talked a little. About happiness, changing hearts, free will, control, even flirted a little, and it almost felt like old times. Except Akechi stayed firmly on his side of the table. Akechi’s gaze never lingered on my face. Akechi never took the subtle invitations I offered, even though I knew he caught them. The only concession, the only weakness he showed, was at the end of the night right as we were leaving. As we ascended the stairs, I heard him mutter, “I’m glad you’re still normal, even in this bizarre situation. If you’d lost it too…” I paused on the steps, waiting, hopeful. Foolish. He stopped too, then turned and smirked at me. “I would have slapped you awake.”

“I might like to be slapped around by you,” I countered coyly. And again, he didn’t take the bait. Damn him!

I knew my fixation was getting increasingly unhealthy. Okay, maybe he just… wasn’t into me like that? But that night at his Palace… the night he was released from custody… did those mean nothing to him? I knew we had a very important mission and an approaching deadline, but we were making good progress. We were getting stronger. And he wasn’t outright denying our mutual interest, he was just… pulling away, and wouldn’t say why. I wouldn’t let that happen. I couldn’t. Not without knowing why.

Even as I obsessed over Akechi, I still hung out with everyone else, especially Sumire. After everything she went through under Maruki, I had developed intensely protective feelings for her. She had become a bit of a shrinking violet, or maybe had just reverted to that introverted self she always had been. It was weird to think I was getting to know her all over again. Everything that seemed to be a “change” in her could just be how she always was, before Maruki’s actualization. As my kouhai, I wanted to help her see her own strengths. I wanted to encourage her, help her see that her life as Sumire was valuable. She was easy to hang out with, sweet and shy and cute, and I did truly admire her.

If I hadn’t been so focused on Akechi, I might have paid more attention to the red in her cheeks those last few days. The sputtering hesitation when I invited her to Leblanc. The way she fiddled with her hands and avoided my eyes when she told me she loved me.

I stared at her, and I couldn’t think of a reason to deny her feelings. I did like her. She was beautiful, and smart, and cute. It could be a normal relationship. A healthy one. I smiled sadly at her. “I’m sorry,” I said weakly. “Sumire, I can’t...”

Her face grew as red as her hair and she quickly stood from the bar. “I-I understand, Kurusu-senpai!” She bowed repeatedly, slowly slinking to the door. “I just… I just felt like you needed to know. This won’t change anything between us, I’ll still fight alongside you... I’m sorry! I have to go!” Then she bounded out of the cafe.

I sighed and rested my upper body on the bar. God, what was wrong with me? Turning down Sumire because, what, I had the hots for a man who said he hated me? The man had tried to murder me twice, and yet I couldn’t get over him. I missed seeing him in Leblanc. I missed playing chess with him, bantering about school and morality and just stupid shit he did on TV as part of some media stunt. I just couldn’t understand why he would retreat, now, of all times.

~*~

I got my answer the day before our deadline.

I threw Maruki the calling card, my body numb. He smiled gently, accepted it, and promised to wait for us in the Palace tomorrow. Then I was alone with Akechi, standing in the dimly lit twilight of Leblanc.

“I will carve my own path for myself.” I could only stare at him, my heart in shreds. The realization that our mission, our goal of restoring reality, would leave Akechi dead all over again. A hollow ache settled in my chest, a throbbing absence of feeling that raggedly grew as he continued. “I refuse to accept a reality concocted by someone else, stuck under their control for the rest of my days.”

“But then... you’ll...” I couldn’t say it. I thought I was going to fall off the edge of the world. Despite everything, _everything,_ the attempted murders and the lies and the pain he brought to everyone around him, I didn’t want to let go of Akechi Goro. Not like this. I reached for his hand, but he slapped me away.

“Spare me your fucking sympathy,” he snapped. “Are you really so spineless that you’d fold under some bullshit, trivial threat to my life?”

I was sure the cafe would catch fire under my feet. His words sparked an enraged flame in that hollow spot, and I was relieved to feel something besides despair. “It’s not trivial,” I hissed, and I grabbed his hand. He immediately pulled away, but he had been pulling away from me for weeks, _weeks,_ because he knew he was going to die, and he wasn’t planning to tell me a goddamn thing about it, he was cutting himself off from me so I would change Maruki’s heart and let him die _again_ so I shoved his back against the bar and pressed my body into him, threading my fingers with his so tight that all his thrashing wouldn’t unravel us. “Your life isn’t trivial _to me_.”

Instead of fighting me though, he went stiff, cold. “Did you think I’d be happy with this? Being shown mercy, now, of all times? I don’t want to be pitied!” He swiftly kneed me in the groin, and that nearly knocked me down, but I clung to him to stay upright, wheezing, chin on his shoulder. “I’m _not_ debating this with you!”

“I don’t want a fucking debate.” I wrapped myself tighter around him, and I could feel him vibrate with rage. “I want _you._ ”

He barked a cynical laugh. “Going to sacrifice the world for the sake of your desires, Joker? Maybe you’re the one with a Palace, now, with such distorted thinking.” He pulled away from me enough that we could lock eyes, and he sneered. “You should just date Yoshizawa and get it over with. Forget about me.”

“Yoshizawa?” That caught me off guard. What the fuck was he talking about? “What does Sumire have to do with this?”

“Has she told you she loves you, yet? It’s been obvious for some time.” His face was more twisted than I’d ever seen it, shattered and wild. “You two could have a normal life. Chasing me will only lead to your destruction.”

“Then destroy me!” I screamed, louder than I think I’ve yelled in my entire life. Akechi’s eyes grew wide. “For fuck’s sake, then, ruin me, touch me, hit me, kill me again for all I care, but don’t you dare deny my feelings for you.” I buried my face into his shoulder, wrapping my arms around his waist, and it felt _right_. Like I fit, like I belonged. Akechi began to tremble, again, but this time I sensed something besides rage. I took a long, deep, shuttering breath, taking in the smell of him- crisp leather and dark cologne. “I told you,” I whispered to his pulse, “I exist to be caught by you, don’t I? Without you, how will I know who I am anymore? I don’t want anyone else. All I desire is you.”

Akechi’s walls were beginning to crumble. He leaned into me, just a breath closer. “So you would sacrifice the reality and lived experiences of every human on earth, just for your own selfish desire?”

I swallowed hard, squeezing his narrow body. His fingertips lightly touched my elbows, skirting up the back of my arms. “Is it a sacrifice to exchange sorrow for joy?” I asked.

He laughed bitterly. “Is that the life you picture for us, Akira? Joyful coupled bliss?” One hand continued its trajectory up my arm and around my shoulder, slipping around my back and pulling me just a little bit closer. I nearly choked on a sob. Why, now of all times, did affection from Akechi feel worse than any wound he could give me? “I’m only alive because Maruki granted that idiotic wish of yours. I _died_ in Shido’s Palace. And I deserve to stay dead.”

“That’s not true!” I countered vehemently, even as my glasses fogged with tears springing in my eyes. “Sure, you always do whatever the fuck you want, always cause problems and stir up shit, arguing with everyone, advocating for the devil, always choosing the most brutal, most violent option, doing everything that you can to get what you want…” Put like that, he did sound like a pretty bad guy. But all the other things he could be… all the things he _was_ to me... “No one else can challenge me like you. No one else stirs me up like you do. You’ve always, always pushed me to be quicker, smarter, cleverer than anyone else. I _love you_ you unlovable bastard, can’t you see that?”

“And what do you hope to get out of Maurki’s reality?” His other hand slotted under my chin, lifting my gaze to meet his, and my breath caught at his expression. For once in his goddamn life, I saw something real in his eyes. Something soft and wounded but caring. A tear slipped down my cheek, and he frowned, catching it on one gloved finger. “To accept this reality would fundamentally change us. Change _me._ If Maruki’s goal is to achieve happiness for everyone, free of pain…” He grabbed the fabric above his heart, clenched tightly. “Without pain, my life is nothing. If he takes that from me… I won’t be myself. And if you accept his deal to keep me alive, you will be betraying my wishes. Even if your “perfect world” requires me, when Maruki takes control, I won’t be _me_ anymore.”

Damn him for being right, damn him for looking like he cared about me in these last few hours of his life. “Tell me you are going to change his heart.” I searched those doeskin eyes for some hesitation, some weakness I could leverage to convince him to live. But I could see resigned, stern acceptance, the resolute calm of a man who reached the final stage of grief. I could only nod mutely. “I want to hear you say it out loud. I won’t wait a moment longer.”

“...We will stop Maruki.”

I was close enough to feel the tension release in his shoulders, and he cupped my face in his hands. “Thank you,” he whispered, and kissed me.

I started to cry, quiet, unbidden tears flowing down my face even as I gasped into Akechi’s mouth, wrapping my arms around his neck. A strange kind of happiness still sparked somewhere in my soul, knowing that Akechi did actually feel something for me, enough at least to indulge in my selfish heat for him. At least I saw it once, just this once, before the end.

His hands slid up my jawline and into my hair, tangling instantly, and the tenderness of the movement gave me goosebumps. I opened my mouth a little, hesitant, not sure what to make of this softer, gentler Akechi. I didn’t know how long he would indulge me, but I wanted to do whatever I could to prolong this moment.

I shouldn’t have worried. Akechi’s tongue slipped into my mouth shamelessly, and my body temperature and heart rate rapidly escalated. Tears were already drying to salty tracks on my cheeks as our hips bumped together and teeth clacked against each other. Maybe this was denial, maybe it was a kind of bargaining ( _stay with me, it could be so good, please just stay_ ) as we deepened the kiss. I tangled my tongue with his, and I slid into his mouth the way he had mine, and we danced this routine for a breathless minute before we broke, panting.

“Goro, come upstairs with me,” I murmured into his neck, and I heard his breath stop. The second time I used his name.

“Akira,” he admonished me gently, hesitantly. I stiffened, worried he was going to say no and leave. “We have something important to do tomorrow.” But he didn’t move away. I allowed myself to hope.

“Let me lock up.” I pulled away and poked my head outside, flipping the sign to closed and locking the door, and when I turned around to see Akechi… to see Goro standing there, unmoved, that hope blossomed into aching need. I carefully padded over to him, touching the sliver of bare skin between his gloves and the cuff of his jacket sleeve.

“Come upstairs with me,” I pleaded again. I gently tugged his arm and he didn’t resist.

It was surreal to walk Goro up to my room, my shitty little attic that I made home. Glow in the dark stars on the beams overhead, trinkets and toys on my shelf, memories of good times. I wanted this to be a good memory too, but what memento would I have to remember it by?

Goro stood awkwardly where I led him, like he didn’t know what to do. It was actually cute.

So different from his Palace, where he was in control. I leaned close and boldly nipped his earlobe, and he jerked away, catching my wrists suddenly and pushing until he splayed my back against the wall and pinned my arms over my head. I smirked, heartbeat slamming in my throat, and I saw his eyes catch the pulsing beat in my neck.

“Go on,” I goaded. “Or should I take charge this time?”

I briefly glimpsed a scowl before he bit at my throbbing artery, holding my heart between his teeth. I sucked in a breath at the sharp sting of pain cutting through my thoughts like a knife. And I knew what I wanted out of tonight.

I knotted my fingers in his long tawny hair and hissed, “Mark me, Goro. Mark my body with your life so it can never forget you.”

Goro growled and I felt him suck at my neck, puckering the skin and rolling it with his tongue. My arms strained against his weight pushing me into the wall, wanting to grab him and pull him even closer even as I felt tiny vessels under my skin popping and pooling red. My skin hummed at the sharp pull into his mouth, and I rocked against him, baring my throat for more access. Everything with Goro was like this. Domineering, overpowering, blissful surrender. I felt the undulations as he sucked and released, actively working to leave a mark like I asked. The thought of going in to battle tomorrow covered in lovebites pulled a pleased groan from my chest. He pulled away to admire his handiwork, lips swollen and wet.

“Reminds me of the interrogation room,” he breathed huskily, eyes skirting hungrily from my neck to my face. Remembering that room caused unsettling flops in my stomach, even though I never saw him shoot me. He _did_ kill a version of me there. Gotta try not to think of that. “You were covered in bruises.” Goro tilted forward to nuzzle at the other side of my neck, tickling a little as he nosed up to my hairline. How things changed. “Never did find out how you survived that one.”

“I’m a trickster,” I teased, nudging the back of his head with my chin. “Takes more than that to kill me.”

He paused, his hands loosening and sliding down my wrists to cradle my hips. “I hope so.” Then he bit me again, this time nearly at the back of my neck, pushing past the collar of my blazer to really get a mouthful. Somehow, my nape felt even more sensitive, raising goosebumps down my arms and buckling my knees like a kitten grabbed by the scruff. My hands free, I fisted the back of his coat, trying to yank it off while he worried at my flesh like a dog with a bone. He shimmied his shoulders without releasing his jaws, letting his coat puddle to the floor. My whole body felt at once rigid and numb, shocks of pleasure shooting from my spine to my fingertips with every fresh little shake and bite and lick. This close, I could feel his wet hot breath, smell that dark chocolate cologne, the leather gloves. I slid my hands under the green sweater he had been wearing under the jacket, thrilled to feel the warm hard press of his stomach.

At that, he broke away again, I nearly swooned at the aching damp spot he left on my skin. The cold air exposed the circumference of the bite, and I could tell it was gonna look nasty. His eyes looked two shades darker as he drilled his gaze into me. This is how I wanted to remember him. I leaned in for another kiss, but he caught my chin in a gloved fist.

“No, Akira.” His voice was firm but edged with a purr, eyes sparkling with dark promises. “You said you wanted me to make sure your body remembered me. I have more places to mark you.” I shivered and grinned. Dangerous Akechi was fun, but I was quickly growing fond of sensual Goro, too. “Take off your shirt.”

Getting ordered by Goro to do something I wanted to do anyway, not a hard bargain. I slipped off my jacket and threw it across the room, rapidly unbuttoning my white dress shirt while Goro watched me with a smile. In another circumstance, I might want to be slower, tease him more, but a spike of sadness through my chest reminded me that there won’t be another time after this…

My hands slowed at the thought, head dropping. Goro clearly noticed and moved my hands away, ripping my shirt off and popping off the last few buttons. “You’re only allowed to think of _this moment,_ ” he commanded with authority after tossing my shirt aside. Then he caught one nipple between his teeth and all thoughts bolted from my head.

“Ahh-hh, Goro!” I simpered at the sudden pain, but he quickly relaxed his teeth and licked at the nub quickly perking up.

“I thought you liked a little pain,” Goro mocked, though his tone sounded almost contrite.

Did I? I certainly enjoyed the danger posed from our last encounter. “N-not sure,” I admitted bashfully. “Just so sharp, it feels-”

My half-hearted protest quickly petered into hiccuping moans as Goro tenderly kissed and lapped at my chest. I hadn’t thought of my nipples as a particular sensitive place, but as he gently teased me with flicks of his quick tongue and the occasional graze of hard teeth, I teetered with unexpected pleasure, glad the wall behind me could keep me upright. The thought he was backing off a little because he didn’t want to hurt me… nothing like the murderous Crow who held a gun on me half our first time together.

“I want you to think of me _now,_ ” he repeated, laving at one nipple as he slid a hand up to graze the other with his leather-clad thumb. “Stay with me in this moment. Don’t you dare think of anything else. Keep all your attention on me.”

Kind of pointless to even attempt anything else while he teased my nipples taught and hard. When the nub in his mouth began to feel overstimulated and I started arching away, he switched, mouthing the other side while he pressed his palm into the first, touching but not rubbing. I ran his locks between my fingers and stared at him as he worked, pink tongue darting out to briefly roll the little protrusion before his whole mouth engulfed it, suckling hard but not painfully and releasing with a pop, leaving a bigger ring of red around the flushed areola. I wanted to pull him up by his hair and get him on the bed, wanted to pull the rest of his clothes off his body and luxuriate in the sight of horny, naked Goro in my room.

But when his kisses began to travel south and he fell to his knees, I felt a knowing, anticipatory twitch in my cock, and I fumbled with my belt buckle even as Goro kissed my groin through my pants.

“Akira.” His voice went right to the base of my spine. “I wanted to do this for so long.”

That caught me unexpectedly. I wanted to ask what had stopped him, before unpleasant thoughts threatened to pull me from the moment, and I _definitely_ wanted to pay attention to every second of this. Instead I asked, “Since when?”

He chuckled as my pants fell to my ankles. “Since an arrogant boy challenged me on live television.” He stroked a hand my from my knee to my hip. “Since he ruffled my hair and made me wear his glasses.” He pressed his lips against the bulging fabric, nosing the growing wet spot near the peaking tip. “Since a thief stole his way into a private theatre and watched a show not meant for him.”

I chased a laugh from my throat. What an answer. God, he was hot. “But you didn’t, even with me at your mercy.”

His eyes gleamed up at me from between my legs. “He got away before I could finish playing with him.” Then he tugged down my remaining clothes and wrapped his gloved hand around the base of my erection.

The feel of the leather sent a Pavlovian shockwave down to my toes, and my cocked jumped a little in his hands. Goro’s grin widened. He never missed a thing. “You like the feel of my gloves?” He stroked his hand tightly up once, down once, dry and rough but it made my skin prickle and jump. “Naughty Akira. That’s not what I gave you the glove for.” His fingers traced the line of hardness up to the head, thumb toying at the nerves of the frenulum, sending spidering shuddering pleasure through my nerves and making me gasp. “You like the feel of this, don’t you? Did you imagine my hand as you jerked yourself off?” I threw my head back and tried to remember how to breathe. “That night on New Year’s,” he continued darkly, “using my voice and imagining my hand. You’re so dirty, Akira.”

For some reason, I expected him to call me Joker, so when my name passed his lips my heart constricted and convulsed. The next thing to pass his lips was the tip of my cock.

I nearly slid to the floor to join Goro. It was more a shock than anything, a brief penetrative experiment as Goro hawkishly watched my reactions. One gloved finger traced a vein down to the base and his tongue followed, leaving a cold wet line in the places I felt the hottest. Analytical as he was, he seemed to be testing the best method, licking up, down, alternating stroking and mouthing, until I just wanted to scream. Then when he finally took me in his mouth, slicked down with experimental swipes of saliva and precum teased down my length, the contented noise he made echoed my own moan.

Feeling the wet heat of his mouth clouded my brain to anything outside of Goro Akechi. I rested a hand on his head and felt him bob up and down, gently at first, just the head, then growing more comfortable, bolder, as he sank a little deeper each time, my breathing synced to his movements. I lost my hands in his hair, probably making another mess of it, hips arrhythmically jolting into Goro’s mouth when I wanted him a little deeper, and smooth as he was, he swallowed down every buck and jerk I made without a cough or gasp. Dammit, even now I _still_ couldn’t make him moan for me.

His hand still worked at me even as he moved his mouth, two delicate fingers wrapping around the base where his mouth couldn’t reach, thumb and forefinger firmly, steadily pushing, stroking, making me even harder somehow. “Goro,” I breathed, “Fuck, Goro, that’s-” then the two fingers became his whole hand gripping me, for one, two quick jerks and then he swallowed me further than he had before, and I lost my ability to words as my brain mottled into white blossoms, and I finally did let the wall take my whole weight as my knees buckled and I sank, stuttering, to the floor.

Goro still knelt between my legs, but now we looked directly into each other’s eyes. He was smirking, smug bastard. I almost pushed him on his back to see how much he’d like the same treatment, but I knew something else I could do, something I hadn’t tried before but desperately wanted to get the reaction from him I craved.

I reached out for him and touched his cheek, trailing down to his cocky lips and brushing them with my fingertips. “That felt amazing.” I told him honestly.

His grin widened and he managed to say “Then let me-” and I interrupted.

“No, let me.” I pulled him in for a hug, tight, constrictive, pouring my feelings into him, palms pressing into his back. “You felt… that was… you’re good, Goro. You’re smart, and you’re so incredibly tough, clever enough to get yourself out of any shitty situation, and you’ve been unfairly thrown in so many…”

“What are you doing?” He snapped, trying to pull away suddenly. He sounded shocked and even offended. “Why are you talking like-”

“I’m so glad I got to see you again. When I lost you in Shido’s Palace, I was out of it for a week. Completely broken. I thought, I could have saved you. That maybe if I had changed your heart, it could have been better.” He thrashed again, almost frantically trying to escape, but I wrapped my legs around his hips and curled myself into him. He needed to hear this, all of this. “I felt guilty for it. Like maybe I had failed you. The Phantom Thief of Hearts, but I never could steal yours. Because I wanted it all to myself.” His shoulders were shaking. The words kept pouring from me. Maybe I needed to say it as badly as he needed to hear it. “You really could be such an asshole, but… but I had fun, all those times we hung out together. Even if you were using me, I still enjoyed all the time we spent. I love talking to you, so smart and witty and funny and cute. I like you. I _love_ you.”

Goro was silently crying in my arms, but he looked mad. When I finally stopped talking he spoke up, voice cracked. “Why.” It wasn’t a question. He tried again. “What kind of ridiculous torture is this?”

“It’s called affection.” I rested my forehead against his. He begrudgingly allowed it. I tried to wipe away a tear and he pushed my hand away. “You seemed like you needed some.”

“I do not,” he huffed petulantly. He blinked away the last tear or two and it was like it never happened. “Idiot.”

“I love you,” I said again, this time teasing just a little.

“Cut it out.”

“I love you.”

“Akira, stop it!”

“I don’t want you to go.” I whispered, and tipped him onto his back with a kiss.

Immediately he flipped our positions, clearly happy to do something a lot less talky. He tried unwinding his scarf, unsuccessfully because he had resumed mouthing at my neck and chest. I pulled the scarf away and he, fumbling, managed to wrench off the sweater. When I felt the heat radiate off his bare chest as it touch mine, my hands couldn’t stop feeling up the tense corded muscles of his abdomen, his slides, his back, his shoulders. “You’re amazing,” I breathed.

“That’s enough out of you,” he growled, catching my chin and aggressively kissing me, his tongue darting in again to tangle with mine and shut me up. But he couldn’t stop my hands from stroking, lovingly, the smooth crests of his shoulder blades, the curved valley between, the mountainous ridge of his spine, fingers tripping on every vertebra. Goro Akechi, all mine, all here, in one piece. But finally, my hands landed on the waistband of his trousers, and he began to impatiently shimmy them off as I rested my hands on his hips.

He was finally, finally naked, kneeling over me, knees bracketing my thighs, his cock leaning full and heavy against his belly, wearing nothing… but the gloves. I gave him a heated look. “How are you gonna finger me with those on?”

A vein in his neck popped and throbbed and his chest heaved with a shaking breath. “What an impudent mouth,” he smarmed. “I can think of a better use for that mouth than those filthy words.” He slid a leather-glad finger into my mouth. “Make it wet and I might give you what you want.”

 _He’d give it to me anyway,_ I thought with a smirk, but I happily obliged, rolling my tongue over the animal skin-covered digit. It filled my mouth more than a finger normally would, feeling overly large and awkward, but my tongue rasped across the bumpy, uneven texture, tasting earth and lingering processing chemical. Dry, rough, I clasped his wrist and closed my eyes and really got into it, giving Goro a good show. Tongue wrapping around his second knuckle joint, teeth squeezing and pulling the fabric, sliding my head up and down, letting his finger loll out between my lips before I greedily sucked it back in, intentionally making as many loud wet slurping noises as I could. When he shoved in a second finger, I moaned for him, bucking my hips into him just for a little flair. I panted as his fingertips pressed against my tongue, touching my back teeth and the ridge of my palate and nearly making me gag.

“Good boy,” Goro teased, and I looked up at him with hooded eyes. A red flush had crept up his chest to under his chin, cock quivering and shiny with wetness.

I grabbed his hips and whispered, “Bed, now.” He obliged, actually helping me up and pushing me back into the mattress, but not before I grabbed something on the lowest shelf, hiding behind a bag of plant food.

Goro grinned when he saw it. “You _are_ naughty, Akira. Did you get this hoping you could get me over? Or did you use it thinking about me?” He snatched the lube bottle from my hands, settling between my legs. My heart raced in anticipation, watching Goro expectantly. “I suppose it doesn’t matter. This is what you want, isn’t it?” He bit the leather above his middle finger and finally removed the glove, pouring the lube onto his bare fingers. He spread it out between his fingers, and I could see the shimmering wetness. With his last gloved hand, he tossed the bottle up the bed, grabbed the back of one knee, and put my leg over his shoulder… then paused.

“Akira…” he looked down at me with soft eyes, and I felt his gaze roam over my legs, my hard,flushed cock, the marks on my chest and neck, and finally my face. He offered a genuine, warm smile. “I love you too.” Then the asshole bit my inner thigh, sucking hard enough to leave another big red welt as his fingers circled around my hole.

“Fuck,” I hissed, trying not to squirm too much and yank away from those teeth. “Fucking shit, Goro, that’s-” then the teeth receded to a gentle lapping tongue and he slipped one knuckle inside me.

My hips jerked and my head rolled back into the mattress as he quickly slipped that finger back out, then tentatively in, brief little flicks to test my reaction. Despite it only being the second time I had something in me, I was surprised how quickly I wanted more. Just the end of one finger, especially with the lube easing the way, almost nothing. I pulled the pillow over my head to hide my shame while I shamelessly muttered, “More, Goro, please!”

And without even a sassy retort, he complied, slowly arching the whole finger inside me, making me croon. _That_ was it. He slowly worked the finger in and out, once or twice adding a little more lube to make sure he had worked it in far enough. My muscles involuntarily twitched and every receding motion, like I was trying to hold him in longer, wanted him deeper, and I _did._ I held the pillow tighter over my face. God, why was I on my back for this? Why did he have to be looking at me? Even with my face covered I felt his eyes.

As though sensing my shame, Goro nipped my femoral again. “Let me see your face.” His voice was almost a coo. “I didn’t get to appreciate it last time.”

“Well you had me face down, handcuffed, and at gunpoint for most of it…”

The pillow was pulled from my loose grip. “I meant the mask.”

Watching Goro’s face as he flexed his finger in and out of me was overwhelming, and I kinda wished he’d let me keep the pillow. Even as I started to relax around him, heat growing in my core, need spiking, it was his face that enthralled me. Calm, clear, serene, not a fake expression carefully designed to make people like him, nor the cracked broken shell his soul raggedly hid within, but a fascinated, concentrated, eager look, absorbed in his task.

A second finger joined, and then suddenly I _felt._ I had grown accustomed to the one, but the second slick wet hard finger was suddenly _something,_ pushing in me a little further, stretching me more, and I arched into him, chest fluttering. Goro smiled. “That’s what I wanted to see.” He curled his fingers in further, searching, moving purposefully even as he worked me looser and wetter and my cock longed for the feel of his mouth again, of the glove, of anything, but my own hands were busy working into knots in the sheets, unable to focus on anything else. It didn’t take long for the detective to find what he sought, and his fingers brushed against a place inside me that bowed my spine and cascaded waves of tingling pleasure through my nervous system. “There we go,” he whispered insidiously.

He focused on that point exclusively then, and every stroke of his fingers hit that spot and nearly made my eyes pop out of my head. “Goro,” I whined, still a little furious he was able to get me like this and I couldn’t make him that way. “Goro, if you keep doing that…”

“Is it that good? Are you close?” His wicked grin just crumbled my resolve to pieces. “Well, can’t have that yet, can we?” As he pulled his fingers out, he stretched them just a bit, flexing open my entrance and drawing out a low moan. The look he gave me was literally criminal.

He quickly smeared another palmful of lube onto his cock and hoisted up both my legs on his shoulders, carefully guiding himself in. I tensed for a moment at the feel of him pushing against me, a momentary flutter of concern before relaxing back down as he gently, carefully, so carefully pushed his way inside. It was still so much more than just a couple fingers, but for once, Goro was patient, and slow, and considerate, and only went in a few inches until he saw my pinched eyebrows relax, my jaw unclench. Still a little too tight, a little too much, but… but maybe Goro was right, maybe I liked a little pain, because I wanted more of him right then, all the way, filled to the brim with Goro, covered in his bites.

“It’s okay,” I breathed. “You can – you can go in, more.”

He slid in a little further, pushing in an inch and pausing for a breath, then a little more, until I felt him fully sheathed in me. I reached up and wrapped my arms around his neck, pulling him closer to me. I needed more of him, like I wanted to pull him into my chest and keep him there next to my heart. _A place where he can live._ I almost lost it again, but instead I held him close as my insides twitched and shuddered and gripped at him, like all of me wanted to keep him for forever.

“I love you,” I whispered again. “Goro, I love you so much and I –” he cut me off by pulling out almost completely, and before I could finish he slammed into me, grabbing my hips and pulling so it was even rougher, and my voice turned to a harsh cry as he pounded my barely-adapted hole. “Goro--” I tried again, but another hard thrust turned my voice into gasping moans. His fingernails drove into my hip bones, curving my spine as he started into a rhythm, face twisted into an almost pained scowl. But despite his efforts to fuck the affection out of me, he was going to hear how much he meant to me before… before…

“Shit,” I gasped, clutching his shoulders. “Fucking hell, Goro, you feel good.” I matched his tempo, rocking into him, the initial pain and surprise wearing off as he met my needs, filled me in those deepest places, touched me places only he had ever reached. “Yes, that’s what I needed, Goro, you’re amazing, you make me so happy…” An errant thrust, a twitch, a roll of his knees to shift the angles and he canted up in a specific, intentional way, managing to brush that spot inside and melted my voice into a voiceless whine, but if he thought that would stop me…

“I missed this so much, I wanted to go back to your Palace so you could fuck me stupid again, Goro, wanted to bring you back here and touch you once I knew you were alive, fuck I missed you I love you I wanted this so bad--”

Finally, a break. Finally, Goro choked out almost a sob, and his arms slinked up my sides and wrapped around my shoulders, and he crashed our heaving chests together even as he buried his cock in my ass.

I touched his hair, soft even at all the angles it was poking up, touchable, beautiful Goro. “You’ll always have a place with me, Goro. My rival.” I felt hot tears drop to my chest. All that anger stored up inside him, all the shit he did just to earn approval from his father… well, fuck his dad. He didn’t need validation from him. But I wanted to show him acceptance, the love I felt, the home he never had. If this was to be our last day… and fuck, it sure felt that way, then I needed Goro to know. He wouldn’t leave this world unloved. Maybe I couldn’t make him moan, but I could make him feel.

“Now, please, my love,” unable to resist letting some sarcasm drift into my voice, “won’t you please, keep fucking me until you make me come all over myself?”

Goro sat himself up, eyes red and wild, face twisted in twisted pleasure. “Such a mouth,” he berated with a hand on my jaw. “I’ll have to punish you for that.” I expected an ever harder pounding, but Goto slowed down to almost nothing, gently rocking his hips in a circular motion, causing my inner walls to flutter with the undulations but not enough to satisfy my hunger for him.

“Wh-what? What are you…”

“Isn’t it obvious? Just doing what you do. Showing _affection._ ” He rolled his pelvis again, the unusual movement sending a slow burn of itching ecstasy instead of the usual snap of lightning. “Just like you. I want to show you how much I _appreciate_ you.”

“Argh, you fuck, you’re just – ahhh...hh…”

Fuck, it wasn’t what I thought I wanted, but the slow centrifuge of movement rocked me, filled me, with such aching sweet deliberateness it was actually really starting to get me off. I reached for my cock, needing something more, something to help push me over that edge sooner than later, but Goro caught my hand.

“I don’t think so. I told you, this is a _punishment._ ”

Oh _hell_ no, without being allowed to touch myself, I wouldn’t… I couldn’t…

The next slow thrust hit that pleasure point in my body again, and I felt tiny shuddering waves of near-orgasm send my cock through a convulsion. A few good strokes and I was done for, but the denial really gored me. I couldn’t take it, I just couldn’t…

“I’m sorry, Goro,” I begged, a part of me furious he was able to best me _again,_ “Please, just, just fuck me, Goro, I need it.”

“Oh, you _need_ it, huh?” He thrust forward with a clean, sharp jolt, hitting my deepest, most sensitive places, causing my eyes to roll back. “Like this?”

“Yes!”

“And this?” He grabbed the back of my knees, pushing them into my chest, tilting my ass up higher and changing the angle so he could drive straight down into me. And then he did.

‘’Fuck, yes!” I was feeling wild, feral, _so_ close that as he sped up, hitting that spot over and over and a crescendoing wave of pleasure struck me, I dimly thought he might be trying to distract me from something but _god_ I couldn’t think of anything but how much he was filling me, stretching me, pushing into me and into me and into me…

I finally grabbed my cock and started to jerk myself off, and the doubling pleasure of Goro’s movements and my own stroking hand fed into that white hot pool of pleasure boiling between my hips, and I knew I wasn’t far off. “Fuck Goro, fuck you’re gonna make me… _god!_ ” Just before I could, though, Goro supplanted my hand for his own, and that _fucking glove…_

I buried my nails in Goro’s back as I came, hard, thick hot ribbons of it spooling up my chest and even over my shoulder grunting muffled cries against his neck. He arched sharply into me, hand stroking and milking out every last drop until my legs stopping twitching.

“Goro,” I sighed, brain already drifting but still aware he wasn’t done. I lazily fucked into his still-buried cock. “Goro, I fucking love you.”

He resumed the slow roll of his hips, head bowed and hair curtaining his expression. A deliberate, intentional thrusting, deep and hard but slow, and I felt my inner walls clenching, embracing him, cradling him, so I did too, pulling him towards my own dirtied chest. “It’s okay,” I whispered in his ear. “Come in me, please Goro.”

With a wordless cry, he wrapped his arms under my shoulders and kissed me, messy and sloppy and sweet and with a few more final desperate cantering bucks, I felt damp heat fill my body.

We lay there, panting, exhausted, broken, while I stroked his back and he errantly kissed whatever of my skin he could reach. Finally, my aching behind had enough and demanded I pull myself free of Goro’s spent dick, but even then I couldn’t manage to extricate myself completely.

“Stay with me,” I asked one more time. “Not… forever. Just tonight.”

He groaned, and for once, he sounded too tired put any malice in his complaint. “I can’t. We have a job to do tomorrow, remember? If I stay, I won’t…” he stopped himself, rolling his back to me. I understood.

“I wouldn’t want to leave you, either.”

He kissed me, one final time, and we managed to separate without showing another tear.

~*~

After Maruki’s Palace, I woke up in a cell in juvenile. Immediately, I glanced down my gray state-issued jumpsuit. Then I had to check my neck, using the shitty unbreakable mirror set firmly into the wall. The unblemished skin of my neck, my chest, my thigh, told me everything.

Of course. In this reality, Akechi Goro had been dead since November. I collapsed on the bed and bawled my fucking eyes out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So this... might be the end? I have a few disjointed ideas to play around with still, but you may be left with a cliffhanger for a bit. But hope you enjoyed!


	7. The Absurd

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay I lied. Immediately after posting Chapter 6, I got ideas for at least two more chapters, so here we go!

I stood in front of my parent’s house for the first time in over a year. That’s how I thought of it- my parent’s house, not mine. My home, I had to claw into existence in the attic of a back-alley cafe. My home conjured smells of coffee and curry spice, of dim warm lights and creaking floorboards, dust and dusk. Small, ugly, forgotten, but mine. Where I belonged.

Contrasted with this modest suburban two-story in a quiet neighborhood, filled with homes almost identical to it, it felt sterile. Empty. Not mine.

Morgana poked out of my bag and placed his front paws on my shoulder, and the familiar gesture grounded me in the surreal moment. “Are you okay?” he asked gently.

I idly scratched the top of his head. My parents sent me away after I was wrongly convicted for a crime. I had tried not to blame them… Dad had just been promoted, and Mom had a roster of loyal clients in the area. They couldn’t easily pack up the whole family and move to Tokyo to take me to the one school that would accept me with my record. And yet, it was hard not to feel abandoned when they barely reached out to me that whole year, offered little support, never visited.

“No,” I finally answered. “I’m not. But I guess I will be. Eventually.”

I made it to the front door and tried my key, but it didn’t fit. After a moment of panic thinking my parents changed the locks, I dumbly realized I pulled out Leblanc’s key by force of habit, and I had to struggle to remember which was the house key. Finally, I got the door unlocked and stepped into the genkan.

“I’m home,” I called out hesitantly, the words foreign to my tongue. I never told Sojiro I was home when I returned to the cafe. Before I managed to get my shoes off, Mom appeared in the entryway. I caught a glimpse of deep crow’s feet edging her eyes and frown lines in her cheeks that hadn’t been there before, then she swept me into a tight hug.

“Welcome home, Akira,” she said, and my heart filled until it burst, though with happiness or sorrow, I couldn’t say.

I hugged her back in a daze. I was really back at my parent’s house. Tokyo, the Phantom Thieves, Shido, it all felt like a game, a dream, completely surreal… until Morgana chimed in with an exaggerated, intentional _meow!_

Mom jumped back a little bit, surprised. “This is… my cat,” I introduced lamely. “Mom, Morgana. Morgana, Mom.”

“A...cat.” She stared at him blankly. “I didn’t know you… liked cats. When did you get a cat?”

I shrugged and slipped on my house slippers. They were right where I left them. Everything was so familiar, yet so strange. “Not long after I got to Tokyo. I’m gonna head up to my room for a bit, is that okay?”

She continued to stare at me vacantly, like she wanted to say something. Like maybe reprimand me for bringing home an animal without permission, or hurt that I was already going to shut myself in my room. Was I that different from before? “That’s… fine,” she finally settled on. “We got the box of your things earlier today. They’re in your room.”

I nodded and turned to head up the stairs. “Akira!” She called after me, and yeah, she did sound a little hurt. “I’m sorry we couldn’t pick you up from the station, we were just busy, and you didn’t answer our calls after a few weeks in Tokyo so that’s why we…”

“It’s okay,” I said, but I couldn’t face her. “It’s fine. I get it.” I quickly headed up the stairs before I could have the same awkward interaction with my dad.

My room looked untouched, except for that familiar cardboard box in the corner, now significantly worn at the edges and bowing outward. The box that was my closet and dresser for a year, now intruding in this space, the room of a stranger. Posters on the wall for idols I completely forgot about. Messiness on my desk I hadn’t cleaned, and I felt a pang of loss seeing it was filled with normal school supplies- pencils, erasers, rulers- and not tools for infiltration. A shonen manga thrown on my bed, and when I thumbed through it, I scoffed at the fight scenes. _If you really attacked someone holding your knife like that, you’d break the shit out of your wrist._ God, was I really this immature a year ago?

I pulled out the trinkets from my friends that used to be on the bookshelf back home, but I didn’t have an empty place to put them here. I knocked all the supplies off my desk and set them up there for now. I’d have to get a new shelf, maybe a potted plant…

Morgana walked around the room, inspecting everything. “You really used to live here, huh?” His tone was carefully neutral. I slipped my hands into my pockets and looked around.

“I can barely believe it myself.”

Morgana jumped on the bed, stretching out happily. “At least the bed is comfier than back home.”

Even Morgana knew. This place wasn’t home. I sat down next to him, stroking under his chin. “Yeah.”

_Just one more year,_ I promised myself. _Just finish high school, then you can go wherever you want._

Of course, figuring out exactly where I wanted to go was the problem. As I painfully forced myself back into the suburban life, I realized I didn’t really have any motivation. I just went to school, came home, did my homework, and chatted with my friends as they spread throughout the country. Or, in Ann’s case, out of the country.

My old friends in town… we didn’t really see eye-to-eye anymore. They had basically dropped me once the assault charges went public, and while a few of them had the courage to try talking to me again, it wasn’t the same. I saw how I had changed by our interactions. Someone would jokingly try to punch me in the arm or something after a joke, and I instinctively evaded them with such speed they asked me if I had been taking martial arts. “Aikido,” I would lie, thinking of Makoto. When someone forgot the combination to their bike lock, I picked it for them, and everyone seemed to hug their possessions a little closer. When I talked to them, they were put off by my sarcasm and snark, especially at any aggression I displayed when I saw an injustice. Any attempt to repair old friendships probably died the day I stood up to a kid getting bullied. It brought back memories of Mishima and Shiho, cowering from Kamoshida, and when I challenged the guy, he threw a clumsy fist at me. I dive-rolled under his arm, kicked out the back of his leg, and reached for a weapon I didn’t have, all in one motion, leaving him to fall flat on the floor. Since it was self-defense, I didn’t get in too much trouble, but rumors certainly started back up again. I heard everything from me leading prison riots to joining the yakuza.

Plus, being seen talking to your cat never helps your standing, either.

There was just… no one interesting. Nothing important happening. Halfway through the year, people were getting worked up over rumors about two teachers who might be dating, and I couldn’t stop thinking, _This time last year, we were in a race to stop an international hacker group from committing a massive cyber attack on the country_. And this is where I was now?

My old comics and video games were near embarrassing to even look at, so I started reading philosophy books. It made me feel closer to _him_. Jean-Paul Sartre really appealed to me in particular. Not only were his ideas dense and complex, allowing me to spend weeks pouring over and analyzing them, but as I started to understand his philosophy, I realized it fit the strangeness I had been feeling since I returned.

This normal life should be familiar. I was in the town I grew up in, the house I had spent the last decade, surrounded by people I had known all my life. And yet, everything felt so unusual, like it didn’t have the right context or shape anymore. I had trouble finding any reason to do anything anymore. Part of me wanted to graduate, move back to Tokyo and work at Leblanc, but then what? None of the other Phantom Thieves would be around by then, maybe not even Futaba. I had connections in the city, but for what? I wasn’t going to be doing any more mystical heists in a hidden world.

I had my freedom, a clean record, the ability to do whatever I wanted… and it paralyzed me. I didn’t know my reason for existing anymore. Existentialism helped me give shape and words into my struggle to find meaning in this safe, mundane reality. The absurd. The lack of meaning, the lack of inherent purpose of life. The name really fit.

I managed to hold on, coasting by with decent grades and respectable if not social relationships with my parents and peers. And then, on the day of my high school graduation, something interesting finally happened.

~*~

Akechi woke up, which was a surprise. Hadn’t expected that

He took a moment to orient himself. What was the last thing he remembered? Shido’s Palace. Fighting his cognitive self. And losing.

And yet… he also had memories of Christmas Eve, New Year’s. Akira. He remembered being with Akira, that night in Leblanc. But, if he died in Shido’s Palace…

Maruki! Akechi tried to open his eyes but piercing white lights burned his dry aching corneas, and he decided against it. Did they fail?! No… no he remembered the fight with Maruki and his godlike Persona. Akira… Akira had the treasure. It had to have worked.

But then… how was he alive?

Next, he had to take stock of his body. He felt worse than he had ever felt in his life, like he had been reassembled after being run through a shredder. Every joint, muscle, and bone weighed him down, aching and stiff from disuse yet still utterly exhausted. No movement, not even opening his eyes or his mouth, felt doable. He just wanted to drift back to sleep, but stubbornness and rage kept his mind working. He needed to know why he was left alive. What happened to reality. And maybe, eventually… what happened to Akira.

If he couldn’t move, what could he smell, hear, feel? It smelled… stale, cold, sterile. He heard a gentle, rhythmic beating. It felt like he was in a bed, sheets up to his chest, head and shoulders slightly elevated. A dull yet sharp, itchy ache on the back of his hand, thin plastic around his wrist. Handcuff? No, not tight enough. A light but persistent pressure around his nose and mouth area, a low constant rush of air helping him breathe.

Hospital, he surmised readily enough. He still had a lot of answers, but for now, he was alive. He forced his mind to relax, to rest, and to regain enough strength to secure his safety from here on out. Then, he could get to work on more important things.

~*~

Diploma in hand, I could finally start figuring out what the hell to do with my life. Makoto and Haru both enjoyed their first year of college. Maybe I could go. I had a nice little nest egg left over from all those Shadows we fought. Or I could ask Sojiro for another year at Leblanc… although the absence of a certain regular might make that too depressing to consider.

When I made it home, I checked the mail slot before my parents returned from work. They didn’t come to graduation, at my insistence. I didn’t see the point, after all. My year away had really broken me of any dependence on or expectations from them. We received a lot of the usual- some bills, some credit card applications, and… wait. On the bottom of the pile was an unmarked envelope with just my name written on the face. No address, return, or postage. I tossed the mail and my diploma in the kitchen for my parents and kept the secret envelope for myself.

I went up to my room, locking the door behind me. Morgana jumped up, ready to give me congratulations, but clearly saw something in my face.

“Haven’t seen that expression on you for a while,” he said, and I could tell he was excited. He had long ago stopped trying to cheer me up from my maudlin existentialism. “What happened?”

I showed him the envelope, and his eyes immediately narrowed with suspicion. “Clearly, it didn’t come in the mail. Someone put this in there specifically for me.” I slipped on Akechi’s old glove, now worn and faded from, ah, overuse. I did keep it clean, at least. “Safety first,” I muttered. With the envelope face-down on my desk, I slid a gloved finger under the flap, carefully breaking the seam. It had enough weight in it I suspected there could be several sheets of paper in it, or even something deadlier, hence the glove. I upended the envelope and dumped the contents onto the desk. Just paper, no powders or anything else suspicious. Cautiously, still using the gloved hand, I grabbed the thickest item, a sheaf of papers maybe a dozen pages long.

A quick review sent chills down my spine. Court transcripts, from my testimony against Shido. My name was blacked out in the documents but I recognized my own words instantly. Certain sentences were highlighted in yellow. In prepping me for testifying, Sae and I decided that trying to explain the Metaverse was too risky, especially now that the app and any evidence was gone. So we settled on a story as close to true as we could manage, without mentioning Palaces or cognitive psience.

The highlights seemed to focus on these little inconsistencies, noting where I said Shido “bribed” companies into funding and supporting his campaign instead of “offering them the chance to change competitors’ hearts.” Or how he “hired a hitman” to take out and intimidate rivals instead of “used his son’s Persona power to drive people crazy or assassinate them by killing their Shadows in a Palace.”

The only other thing in the envelope was a single sheet of paper, a neat line of typed words right across the middle:

_You didn’t tell the whole truth, did you._

My heart felt like it was beating for the first time. Had my blood moved at all since returning to the suburbs? Had I felt one moment of excitement since escaping Shido’s men with my crew? Morgana poured over the documents as well, and I saw a familiar gleam in his eye, tinged with slight concern.

“What the…” he breathed finally. “What is this? Is someone trying to intimidate you?”

I shook my head. “No idea. Whoever did this knows who I am, despite my name being censored in the official record, and knows where I live. Moreover… they at least suspect there’s more to the story. Maybe one of Shido’s cronies?”

“But why?” Morgana mused, using his paws to ineffectually flip through the transcript. “You testified ages ago. Shido’s been locked up ever since. Why now?”

I fiddled with a lock of my hair, still surprised that my glasses weren’t on. I only used them to hide my face when I was a criminal, so I stopped wearing them when I got back. (Especially when Dad bothered me about it, saying it would somehow ruin my eyes to use fake glasses.) But the hair was as curly and unmanageable as ever. “Whatever the reason,” I said with a smile, “they picked a good time to alleviate my boredom.”

I mentioned it in the Thieves’ group chat, and got a range of advice. From Makoto’s guarded “Keep an eye out, and always have Sis’s number in case you get called in by someone shady” to Futaba’s extremely helpful “I’ll send you the latest security cams and we can get eyes on the whole house!” and of course, Ryuji’s well-intentioned “who they hell d’they think they are! They’ll regret messing with the former leader of the Phantom Thieves!” Which, Ryuji, you know that’s not actually advice, right?

Despite our best, scattered efforts, there really wasn’t another lead for a week, when another envelope showed up. This one, Dad found. He brought it up to me, concerned about the lack of address or return on it. I lied and said it was a graduation prank from a friend at school. He didn’t believe me because I didn’t have any friends at school, but simply told me, “Just… don’t get involved in any more dangerous stuff, okay? We worry about you, you know.”

Sure, I huffed. As soon as he left, I locked the door and carefully opened it, forgoing the glove this time. I assumed if someone wanted me dead and had my name and address, they would just do that.

This time, the envelope hid quite the treasure trove. Pictures- lots and lots of pictures. The first one made me cover my mouth to suppress a scream.

An old picture of me, stepping out of Iwai’s shop, with that brown bag tucked under my arm. I looked suspicious as hell, but so did the composition; the angle was high, the film grainy. Security camera footage? I grabbed another photo, this one taken at a distance. But still, I was the center of the frame, surrounded by crowds, in… Shinjuku, by the look of it? Sweat began to bead on the back of my neck. Impossible… impossible! I couldn’t tell when it was, but maybe on a trip to see Ohya or Chihaya? The next one sealed it- me, a different day, different outfit, going into Crossroads. My little secret admirer couldn’t have picked a better shot: I looked painfully, aggressively underage for the bar.

My heart pounded in my ears. Morgana anxiously flexed his claws into my shoulder as he studied the incriminating evidence with me. Somehow, somehow, this person had gotten a hold of those pictures of Akechi’s, too. The ones he used to force himself into our team, the shots of us vanishing into Okumura’s Palace. How… my handle trembled. How did they get these?

There was more, even more. Pages of nonsense code that after a few minutes I realized were from Futaba’s hacking of the TV stations in Shibuya for Shido’s calling card. Pictures of me on the monitors, in my mask. And then… pictures of my parents. The house. My school. Taken from the bushes, or from wide angles, some blurred like the photographer was moving when they shot these. All recent. I licked dry lips. Someone has been stalking me. Someone has been stalking me for a long, long time.

I hadn’t felt this alive in ages.

The last thing from the envelope was the most important. Another single sheet of typed paper, with a ticket clipped to the bottom. It was from a local theatre, for some kind of murder mystery play that ran last year. The words above the ticket simply read, _All I desire is the truth._

“What does it mean?” Morgana asked breathlessly.

It sounded sort of familiar, but I couldn’t place it exactly. “I think,” I surmised, examining the ticket, “we are being invited on a date.”

“What are you talking about?” Morgana pawed at my arm so he could look at the ticket, too. “But this ticket is from last year!”

“Yes, but look. We have the name and address of the theatre. We have a date that, ignoring the year, is only a couple days from now. We even have a time- 7:00pm. There may not be anything running right now, but I think we need to go to this place at the date and time on the ticket.”

Morgana stared, unmoving. “It makes sense,” he finally admitted, “But I don’t like it.”

I couldn’t say the same. My mind was already racing, thinking of possibilities. Without my Persona or weapons, I was at a severe disadvantage, but I couldn’t resist the opportunity to get into a little danger, despite my dad’s insistence to the contrary.

“It’s probably a trap,” Morgana warned, recognizing the look in my eye.

“Well, we’ll find out when we get there, won’t we?”

~*~

I had considered dressing up for the occasion, even buying a white plastic domino mask, but it lacked the style and flare of my Joker mask, so, on the date and time specified, I headed to the theatre in casual clothes. The theatre wasn’t too far away, easy to reach via bike, which was the new old way to get around town. No big city train service, here.

The theatre looked pretty old, and I didn’t see any sign they had a play currently in production. I tried the front door, but it was locked. Mona checked the perimeter too, but didn’t see anything. I glanced up and down the street. Pretty empty in the evening- another weird thing to get used to. Most people in this town went to bed as the sun started to set. It wasn’t even fully dark yet, but there was almost no one on the street. I pulled out some home made lockpicks.

“Joker!” Mona hissed. “This is the real world! If you get caught-”

“Then keep an eye out for me,” I whispered back. It certainly was harder to crack than anything in a Palace, and my fingers were rusty with disuse. I felt and heard pins pop into place, only to lose them a moment later. Mona anxiously chittered in my ear as the minutes ticked by, and then I heard the final satisfying click of alignment, the door easing open for me.

“Stay out here, would you?” I asked Mona, he looked up at me in horror. “Just to make sure no one else can sneak up on me. There’s no other entrance that you saw, right?”

“I guess not…” He looked unconvinced. “But how am I supposed to stop anyone else from coming in here?” I scratched his whiskered cheek.

“I have faith in you, buddy. I’ll try not to be long.”

He eventually nodded, darting off to find a good hiding spot. No one would be suspicious of a stray cat, and certainly not one with Mona’s intelligence and infiltration expertise.

Inside the foyer of the theatre, I nearly fell over myself when I saw an older man patiently waiting just inside the door. Before I could justify how I found myself inside the clearly locked building, he smiled at me, crinkling his eyes.

“Ah, you made it! Right on time, just like he said. Go on,” he gestured to a door behind him. “He’s just in there.”

My hands clenched into fists. The man didn’t seem like the blackmailing type, but would he attack me when my back was turned? I was still young and quick, even if I was out of practice, but if he had something planned…

My hesitation just made him laugh. “You look so unhappy! And after he waited so long to see you, too. Don’t worry, I won’t bite. Go ahead.”

Was he just a dupe pulled into this scheme, too? I knew how to read people, and this man just radiated naivete. A guileless, ingenuous grin, affable face, demure body posture. I sensed no danger from this man, yet if anything, that made me more nervous. I slipped past him while he laughed again at my obvious caution. “Enjoy the show,” he said cryptically, and shut the door behind me.

House lights were off in a dark auditorium. The stage was dark and quiet for a moment, then a spotlight clicked on, illuminating a figure sitting in the middle of the empty set. I grabbed the back of a seat to steady myself, my legs all but knocked from under me.

Akechi Goro absolutely glowed in the limelight, his face a Glasgow grin. “It’s been far too long, Kurusu-kun.”


	8. episches Theater

“Goro,” I whispered in disbelief. Dressed in a white short-sleeve button-up and black slacks, he looked like he was wearing his old summer uniform. I could have run up that stage and tackled him to the floor, and I very nearly did, but after two steps, I stopped. Wait. He called me… Kurusu. He hadn’t called me Kurusu, especially in private, in ages. When we last saw each other, we were on a first name basis. And his expression… I wouldn’t say he was ever easy to read, but he still looked like, well, a villain. The sending of blackmail pictures wasn’t exactly loving boyfriend material, either.

What if… he didn’t remember?

I swallowed hard, my hands beginning to tremble. “You’re alive,” was all I could manage. “How?”

He tilted his head to the side, his grin, if anything, widening. “You don’t want to know why I called you here with such cloak and dagger?”

“Of course I do, but--”

Goro… Akechi… flicked his hand and a knife appeared, and he twirled it playfully. My heart sank through the floor. This wasn’t… this couldn’t… Goro was alive and here and  _real_ but was he… 

He laughed, and the sound was like a thousand tiny needles driving into my skull. “I was relieved to see you didn’t rat me out, Kurusu-kun. All that testimony, yet no mention of the Metaverse. No mention of me. You seemed willing to take a few hits without destroying my good name. Why was that?”

“Because I-” the words caught in my throat. I didn’t think _this_ Goro would take kindly to a love confession. So instead, I clenched my feelings in my chest and jammed my hands into pockets. Cool, composed Joker mode. “There wasn’t enough evidence. Cognitive psience is still theoretical, and we couldn’t prove the existence of Palaces or Treasures. Besides, if we brought it into evidence, it would risk more people learning about cognitive psience. The Metaverse seems to be gone now, but Sae thought it was too risky to let someone know about its power.”

“Good idea. Someone might abuse that power. Hurt people.” Something flashed through his eyes, but it was gone before I could really understand it. He held the knife in his left hand and balanced the blade of the tip of his right index finger. “And I see you’ve been a good boy since I left, haven’t you?”

Something warm curled in my gut. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

He shook his head, his eerie friendliness slowly dissolving. “Suburbs, school,  _normalcy._ It all seems so… beneath you, Joker. You used to be so interesting. Don’t you remember? Don’t you remember the promise you made?”

Remember? Promise? Did he mean… Is that why he sent those pictures? Not to blackmail me but, what, to remind me  how I  skirted the rules of acceptability and legality? To push me back into being a criminal, a Phantom Thief? I felt the small crumpled glove in m y pocket, the one I started carrying everywhere since February last year. Was this all about wanting his rematch?

I started moving towards the stage. “Oh, I remember a lot of things, _Goro_.” There it was again, some emotion darting in his eyes, a fleeting expression of… hope? “I know everything that happened. I know what I did, what _you_ did. What we both had to do. You say I’m boring now?” The lip of the stage started at my shoulders, but somehow, frustration and sorrow and anger enabled me to propel myself over the edge, and I saw Goro start, jumping up from his chair. His knuckles whitened around the knife handle. I was being an idiot, going at him unarmed, but I could barely even see him through the tears welling in my eyes. _Does this mean Goro is gone? Is he just Akechi now? Akechi, the murderer? Akechi, the unrepentant bastard?_ “You have _no idea_ what I’ve been missing. How much I wanted, how long I waited, for a moment like this. If you want your rematch now, I’d be HAPPY to oblige-”

Wherever I was going with that speech, I’d never finish it. I distantly heard the knife clatter to the floor, and Goro rushed me. I braced for an attack, but he swallowed me in a bone-shattering hug before grabbing my face and kissing me like I was the first breath of air he’d had in months.

Everything disappeared except for Goro’s lips, his hands trembling as they snaked into my hair, his shuddering, heaving chest against mine. I wrapped myself around him and dissolved into the kiss. His jaw worked into me, our tongues meeting eagerly, and my head swam from lack of oxygen. Every gasp of air I caught was an aching moment where I wasn’t kissing Goro, and he pressed so hard into me that I had to keep taking steps back or else I’d be knocked over. It was him. He was here. He felt and tasted and smelled just the same, his hair maybe a little longer and maybe he’d grown an inch taller but it was him, it was Goro, he was alive and with me once again. 

Tears rolling down both our cheeks,  Goro finally slid away, burying his face in my shoulder, and I held him tightly as we both just breathed, and breathed, and existed together. I wanted to ask him everything, starting with  _what the hell was_ _that about_ b ut nothing felt right in that moment except silence.  Goro’s whole body quivered under my palms, a shocking vulnerability I never thought I’d see from him. He needed this moment, and I wasn’t going to pull him from it until he was ready. 

I knew he was back when he gently nipped the side of my neck and whispered my name.  _Akira._ I pressed my forehead to his and just laughed. “I’m so glad,” I murmured. “I’m so glad you’re alive, I missed you-”

He stopped me with a hand over my mouth, and dare I say, he looked a little pink. “Again with this simpering adoration, it’s not cute, you know.”

I felt my trodden-down heart soar again. I pulled his hand away after dusting his knuckles with kisses. “So you remember…?”

He scoffed. “Of course I do.”

I slapped him on the ass, and he jumped. “Then what the hell was  all  that?” I demanded, voice a little louder than I meant. “The knife and the performance and the… the assholery!”

Goro bothered to look a little embarrassed. “Things have been… odd. Unpredictable. I needed to make sure you were still you.” Well, that was cryptic. “If it makes you feel better, the knife is a theatrical replica.”

“Do you want to talk about it?”

He glowered, and clearly did  _not_ want to talk about it and was frankly offended I even asked, but he eventually sighed and visibly bit back the witty retort. “Go on, ask.”

Deep breath. Okay. “How are you alive?”

He winced. “I’m honestly not sure,” he said, sounding perturbed. “I remember Shido’s Palace, but I also remember everything that happened the following January. Everything.” He gave me a heated look, and I sincerely debated whether I really _needed_ to know what was going on and maybe there was a private room we could borrow… but no. No, I had to pay attention. Obviously. “I woke up in a hospital sometime in April. After a few weeks I managed to figure out what happened: Namely, that after being shot in Shido’s Palace, I somehow was transported out of the Palace. By then I was unconscious, but someone spotted my body lying near the Diet building and called an ambulance. I was in the hospital, in a coma.”

I reeled. Goro survived… Goro escaped the Palace. But how? “I don’t know how I got out,” he said before I could ask. “But when I woke up, I was afraid Maruki’s change of heart somehow failed. I didn’t know who I could trust. And when I finally got out and learned you had gone home…” he looked away.

Ah. He was worried that Maruki had still made a different reality, one where I was happy living a quiet life. 

“I had some investigations I had to do. Figure out the state of the country, the world, and frankly, my role in it. Thanks to privacy laws, my hospital stint was kept out of the media. I assume I also have to thank my father’s co-conspirators, hard at work in their cover-ups. They never had access to the Metaverse and didn’t realize I could no longer use it, so they tried to shut me out and tear me down any way they could.” Anger boiled behind his eyes. What had he gone through the last year? Again, he answered my unspoken question. “I didn’t want news of my survival putting a target on my back, so I went undercover for a while. First, I had to access the court records and transcripts to see if I was outed as Shido’s hitman. Thank you for that, by the way.” He shot me a quick smile. “Next, I had to figure out the identities of conspirators and Shido loyalists trying to hide their involvement, cover up their crimes, and those who continued to benefit from their ill-gotten arrangements. I had to take them down one by one.” At my horrified expression, he grinned wryly. “No, not like that. Just bits of evidence here and there to destroy their elections, sway public opinion, shame them out of office. I couldn’t leave them in power.”

I was astounded at what he had gone through over the last year, while I was busy studying for exams and reading philosophy. “Why didn’t you contact me sooner? I could have helped!”

He avoided my eyes. “I thought… you might be done with this world. With… me. You were back home, back in school, keeping your nose clean as far as I could tell. I didn’t think you wanted anything to do with criminals and coups.”

I kissed Goro again, letting my hands slide down his cheeks to his neck to his shoulders, slow and reassuring. All this time, he  had been watching me. That’s what those last pictures meant- even as I fell into depression, Goro was lingering nearby, watching me,  thinking I was done with him, that I was content. “You’re not actually that good a detective, are you?” I teased. “I have been bored out of my mind since leaving Tokyo.”

The corners of his lips quirked up just a bit. “Then, maybe I didn’t want to put you in any danger.”

That made me laugh. “Bullshit. You have endangered my life more than any other person on this planet.” I stroked his hair, struggling to really accept he was here and I wasn’t in some delirious dream. “Besides,” I whispered, leaning in to his ear. “I like danger.”

He inhaled sharply and grabbed my wrist, suddenly yanking me behind him as he stormed through one of the wings. “Goro?” I asked, nearly tripping on some lighting cables as he wound through the back stage. I had a flash of memory to last time I was in a theatre, creeping through mostly empty hallways and closed doors… 

Goro shouldered us through a door down a long remote highway, kicking it closed behind us. I saw it was a dressing room, not dissimilar from one in which I saw a copy of myself preparing for a show. I reeled and Goro was back on me, holding me tightly, biting my neck. 

“I woke up without any marks,” I told him, almost like an afterthought, and he obliged by burying his teeth into my flesh and sucking down hard. I moaned at the sensation, something I missed, something I craved, and I could already feel the telltale ache blossoming when he popped his lips off and I swept my thumb under his damp bottom lip. 

But then Goro surprised me, like he always does, pulling me with him as he fell back onto a couch on the back wall of the room. “I want you to  fuck me,” he said simply. 

I almost fell on top of him as my knees gave out under me. “Wha-”

“Don’t ask stupid questions now, Akira, it’s unbecoming.” He splayed himself on the couch in a frankly illegal display of his body, erection straining under his clothes, one-handedly undoing the buttons of his shirt with every word. “I. Want. You. To. Fuck. Me. Has your boring life dulled your senses that much?”

I went to my knees in front of him, eyes drawn to the obvious line straining out of his pants. “I love you, you asshole,” I said with an incredulous laugh. I whipped off his belt and pulled off his pants. I hadn’t done this since the last time I was in a theatre. 

I would never be able to sit through a play again without getting hard.

Goro was already achingly erect, and I enjoyed the surprisingly silken skin of his cock, running my fingertips down its length. Goro sighed, and I didn’t hesitate to take him in my mouth, savoring his thickness that was already making my jaw ache to accommodate. My tongue slid down the length of him. He smelled surprisingly fresh, clean, heady with arousal, and just getting to go down on him again was having a complimentary reaction in my own jeans. Knowing Goro wasn’t the type to make a lot of noise, I wrapped a hand around the base, intending to suck him off nice and slow just for my own enjoyment. 

As opposed to the jerky, suffocating way he fucked my throat in his Palace, in the theatre of reality, I slowly lapped at him, my hand lazily stroking up and down his length. I reveled in the twist of his eyes when my fingers brushed over the head of his cock, knuckle of my forefinger stroking over the slit. He looked at me with fire, with aggression and passion that sparked a similar flame in me. I caught his precum on my finger and brought it to my lips, eye contact unbroken. If I took my eyes off him, he might disappear again, and I wanted him to see every single thing I was going to do to him.

I tongued the pinched underside of his frenulum, and I was rewarded with a tossed-back head and another sigh. I played with that spot a bit, kissing and catching it between my lips in a gentle suction. Goro bit his bottom lip, eyebrows knitting together. I swallowed him down again,  eyes turned upward, and Goro twined his fingers into my hair, staring at me brazenly as I slid my head further and further onto his cock. I splayed my hands on his thighs, pushing his legs open, nestling myself closer and closer and enabling me to go further and further down,  our eyes locked the whole time . 

What would it take to make him moan for me?

“You’ve gotten better at this, Akira,” he said approvingly. “Where have you been practicing?”

I pulled myself up slowly, letting him feel my mouth on every inch until his cock slipped from my lips, falling back against his belly. I stroked him as I said, “If I’d had anyone besides you, I’m sure you would have noticed, you stalker.”

A smile pricked at the corner of his lips. “I might have needed to add some targets to my list, if you had.”

“ _Goro_.”

“Kidding. Mostly.”

I rolled my eyes at him, resuming my delicious exploration of Goro’s body. I still didn’t know what I could do to make that voice cry out for me instead of mouthing off, until I remembered his request- rather, his demand. If I was going to top him… there was something I  _had_ to try.

I cupped my hands under his ass and hauled him up,  angling his hips upward and exposing him to me. Goro squirmed in surprise as I wrapped my arms around his waist to hold him up. “Akira, what the hell-” I buried my face in him and ran my tongue across his hole. 

His whole body shuddered in my arms,  and he tried  to worm away but I had all his leverage. “Akira,” he said again, but his voice was thready and high. Ohhh, that was promising. I shift ed my grip to push him open, giving me more  access , and I did it again. Goro tried to say  _fuck_ but never made it past the first syllable. 

“Sensitive,” I breathed, and he drew in a shivering breath. 

“Shut up,” he snapped, but his voice was wispy.

“If you insist,” I chuckled, and rewetted my tongue before lazily circling it around the ring of his muscles, already pulsing and twitching at the barest touch. Goro bit the back of his hand, muffling any noise he may or may not have been making. My heart beat harder and harder, excitement at the promise of victory. Well, if he was going to try to suppress it, I would have to work harder to make him cry out.

I played with him lazily, sometimes running my tongue up to his thigh, or to his testicles, but always returning back to  his entrance, strangely entranced in cataloging every  aching arch of his feet and flex of his a s s I lapped at him with the flat of my tongue, or when I switched to quick, short flicks and his eyes dart ed  furtively and his breathing turned staccato.  He was tense, probably due in part to the sharp angle of his back, but I was getting to into this, the way his body curved under me and  gave me the perfect angle to see a flush of heat growing up his chest to his neck, and how he clenched his eyes shut whenever I looked at his face. 

I pulled him tighter to my body, letting his legs fall over my shoulders in what I hope was a more comfortable angle. But I couldn’t stop now, so close to my victory. I dragged my tongue bluntly up the crook of his ass until the tip found his rim- and I pushed in, just slightly. Goro gasped and _groaned._ Flush with excitement, I did it again, straining past the tightness and the  musky scent of arousal and warm flesh, pushing my tongue into him until a shattered, keening moan finally escaped Goro. 

“Got ya,” I whispered, smirking victoriously. 

“What are you talking about,” Goro growled. The effect was somewhat ruined by pink in his cheeks and his tightly-closed eyes. 

“I finally made you moan for me. I win.” 

“Oh really? You think you’ve-” he sucked in a hard breath as I purposefully broached his hole with my tongue. “You think this means anything?”

“I think it means you’re a lot more sensitive than you let on.” I thrust in once more, and he sank his teeth back into his fist, suppressing his voice just to spite me. Still, I could hear a deep, chesty rumbling coming from his throat. “I think it means you’re getting eager for me. Hungry for me.”

“Nonsense,” he lied, voice short and tight. “Just thought I should take you up on your offer.”

That made me pause. “What are you talking about?”

His eyes snapped open, glowering at me like I was teasing him on purpose. “In Leblanc, before we fought Maruki. You said you wanted to ‘take charge’.”

Did I say that? I considered carefully, making sure Goro saw me pensively lick him. “I might have said that,” I mused, adoring Goro’s heated glares. “How sweet of you to remember. You must have missed me.”

“Didn’t miss that impudent _mouth_ _-_ ” Using my hand to push him open more, I eagerly flexed my tongue into Goro, in and out, until he couldn’t hold his voice back anymore. He clenched the arm of the couch under his head and _whined_ , and the sound went right to my dick. Hungry now, I experimentally pressed my thumb against Goro’s wet, trembling hole, watching the tip of my finger slowly slip past the rim of muscle. Goro hissed, finally shifting his legs to push his feet on my shoulders and knock me away.

I sat back, dazed, staring as Goro suddenly dangled himself over the edge of the couch and grabbed something, turned towards me, and threw it at my chest.

I caught it reflexively. I stared dumbly at the bottle of lube. “What?”

Akechi’s angry face was really cute. “What do you mean, what. You know how this works.”

I blinked. “No, I mean… why do you have this?”

He rolled his eyes and leaned into me like he was just going to take over instead. “Because I live here, idiot.”

I blinked again as Goro snatched the bottle back from me and started lubricating his own fingers. _Wait_. _I thought that was my job._ “You _what?_ ”

He smirked, leaning back again. “Not enough blood left in your brain, Akira?” Whatever thoughts were left in my head trickled away as I watched Goro slide a wet finger in his own ass. I couldn’t remember how to breathe. “Turns out being in a coma for nearly half a year and not paying rent gets you-- _evicted_.” He sighed dramatically at the last word as he pushed deeper into himself, hitching his body up for a better angle. I could be doing something, but I was transfixed by the lewd sight of him. I needed to memorize this scene more than I needed to pay attention to what he was saying. “I needed a place to stay, and the owner of this theatre owed me a favor.” His eyes fluttered close and his voice tightened, expression twisting beautifully as he slid his finger in and out. I leaned over him and started kissing his neck. “Plus, it was close to a certain target of mine. I had to… keep an eye on him.”

I pushed aside the unbuttoned shirt I had somehow let him keep wearing all this time, mouthing my way down his neck to his collarbone. His arm shifted and I glanced down to see another finger disappear inside him. I bit my lip. _Fuck._ “I can’t believe you have been living in a theatre in my home town this whole time. _”_

“Not any different from living in the attic of a cafe in Tokyo, is it?” He whispered in my ear.

It would be very hot to suck him off while he fingered himself, I decided, but as I moved my mouth down his chest, I stopped at his sternum. A ragged round scar raised up to meet my lips, and as I focused my eyes, really _looked_ at Goro, I saw a number of precise, clean scars all over his chest. I pressed my fingers to the marks, my eyes suddenly stinging.

“Goro,” I whispered, suddenly realizing just how seriously he had been hurt. I rubbed my thumb across the scar. “Goro, that’s-”

He cut me off by leaning up and kissing me, grabbing the back of my neck to keep me there, and my head spun as his tongue pushed into my mouth and my thoughts quickly turned to _holy shit, Goro, don’t you remember where my mouth just was?_

Another hand grabbed mine, hot and wet and now I was thinking about where _his_ hand had just been, but I got the hint. I scrambled for the bottle, lubed my own fingers, and pushed in two at once. Goro jumped a little but caught my mouth again, clearly wanting to keep me focused. And as my fingers pushed into tight velvety warmth, the sounds he made into my mouth made me weak and realized I much I needed to be in him.

Being on the other end of it, though, I knew this part was important. I stretched my fingers into him, feeling him clamp and quiver, so shockingly tight I couldn’t imagine how this was going to work. I opened my mouth to his and kissed him slow, even as I increased my tempo. I crooked my fingers a little, feeling around blind and trying to remember where Goro had made me feel so good before and if I couldn’t find that same spot…

I brushed over an area that made every muscle spasm in Goro’s body, and the absolute debauched moan I got as a reward nearly made me come untouched. “Amazing,” I gasped, and thrust into him again, moving with professional ex-Thief dexterity to that spot, and Goro’s grip around me tightened and I could feel him practically _buzzing_ as he tried to clamp down his voice. “You’re really feeling me here, aren’t you Goro?” He didn’t want, or maybe couldn’t look at me, head titled back at a painful-looking angle, mouth hanging open, eyes closed. The fact he didn’t have a comeback for once astounded me. I couldn’t help but tease him as I moved my fingers with quick, hard intention.

“I love that face you’re making, Goro. Don’t hold anything in anymore.” I leaned in and nipped his neck, and finally he relinquished, stuttering voiceless cries driving me faster, eager. I managed to push in a third finger and I saw how his whole body felt me. “You look so hot, so _wickedly_ beautiful, Goro, can’t believe we didn’t just start off like this. God, you are _loving_ this, aren’t you? You _needed_ me just like I needed you. Now that I have you back I’m _never_ letting you go!”

Goro grabbed my bottom lip in his teeth, biting hard enough that I yelped. That was going to bruise. “I do,” he growled, his voice throaty with arousal, “I do need you. Hurry up and _fuck_ me already.”

My head swam. Even sexed-out, hair wild, sweat beading his forehead, Goro was still bossing me around. It was unbelievably hot. I slowly dragged my fingers out of him, earning a slow hiss, before I quickly removed my clothes. Finally naked, I lubed up my cock, the first time it had been touched for this whole wild day, and it felt _so_ good.

I propped myself between his legs. He held up his knees and practically _presented_ himself to me. I couldn’t believe I was about to do this, finally put my dick in the famous Detective Prince…

The tightness that squeezed the head of my cock was almost unbearable, despite all the preparation, and we both made such hedonistic sounds as I slowly pushed in and out of Goro. “Just do it,”he seethed, his ablaze and no longer hiding from me. “ _ **Fuck**_ _me, Kurusu_ _Akira_ _._ ”

Fuck! I jolted forward and yelled as I sank balls-deep into him, my mind wiped out to nothing but my knees, my hips, his ass, my cock, and I wanted to swoon. The way his muscles spasmed around me, his mouth thrown open in wild abandon, the first time I think he finally and completely released control of his own body as I repeated the motion, grinding into him, seating myself fully in Goro’s body.

“You’re so depraved,” I muttered, grabbing the clear lines of his hipbones and pulling him into me even harder, earning me a nice little choked gasp. “I want to give this to you,” I punctuated with another hard punch, leveraging up with my knees, “Take that careful control from you and let you be yourself. You wild-” _thrust_ “bloodthirsty-” _thrust_ “sexy Detective.”

Goro moaned with every movement, arms arching over his head to grab at the couch’s arm again. I saw his heaving chest, marred by the near-fatal bullet wound and surgical scars, knowing underneath, despite everything, despite it all, despite fate, his heart still beat. I pulled him up by the shoulders, holding him against me and driving him deeper on my cock. He crooned, throat stretched in a tempting line so I licked up to his ear, letting him ride me as I continued pushing up into him.

My hands devoured the flat plane of his back, his sweat-slick skin. The air was pierced with the rhythmic wet sounds of flesh on flesh. Goro fumbled and tried to get his feet under him, give himself better leverage, but his balance was poor and I kept knocking him off balance with every errant jolt. I shifted, holding his sides as I sat myself on the couch, positioning Goro’s legs on either side of me. He rested his hands on my shoulders, now straddling my lap, my cock still buried deep in his ass. He stared hungrily into my face and I smirked.

“Go on,” I insisted, trailing a hand into his messy long hair, “fuck yourself on my dick.”

He sneered, shifting his weight to the balls of his feet, and balancing himself on my shoulders, and he actually did, but not without commentary this time. “All that talk – you think you can – order me around – like some kind of – devoted sycophant-” I moved in time with him, canting up when he dropped his weight, threads of pleasure unspooling in my gut as I pushed higher, harder, into his eager hole.

“You’re wrong there,” I murmured, fisting his hair and keeping his neck taught. The way he glared down at me made me groan and grind up into him again. “I’m the one who’s hopelessly obsessed with you.”

I watched the swaying of his long hair as he rode me, felt his head move in my grip, the veins in his neck straining out of his skin, the jut of his collarbone, the sloping bounce of his shoulders. Everything about him was so beautiful. “I’m so lucky,” I breathed, not even to him or me or anyone, just an acknowledgment that this _should not be possible_.

“You should be grateful,” he hissed back, and I bit back a laugh. Even now, he was just _such_ an asshole. God I loved him for it. “Grateful I’m – letting you do this…”

“Oh, I am.” I pressed my hands down on his shoulders as I pushed into him, tilting my pelvis to try to angle at that spot I had found with my fingers, not sure if I could get it from here but _damn_ I was gonna try. “I’m so grateful to have such a _generous_ and _caring_ -” I hesitated. Fuck, what even were we? “—rival,” I decided, leaning back as much as I could to really get the direction I wanted and after one, two strokes, Goro’s breath caught and his spine straightened and he sunk down on my cock and stayed there a moment, grinding into my with intention.

His eyelids fluttered prettily, voice a ragged wisp, and I wanted more of _that_. “Yes,” I gritted out, warmth puddling somewhere around my sacrum. I chased that warmth into Goro like a pleasure-seeking missile, aiming for sweet spot deep inside of him. “I want you to feel all of me, feel all those months of my boredom, my longing for you, that glove I carried with me everywhere, the books I read thinking about you, how much I missed arguing and debating you, all those nights I jerked off thinking about you-” I couldn’t stop, punctuating each line with a desperate jerky thrust, my world narrowing down to just Goro as he moaned and arched and spasmed with each confession of love, each sharp stab into his body.

I wrapped my hand around his cock as I felt orgasm creeping closer, and I didn’t want Goro far behind me. The touch interrupted his rhythm, pausing a moment, then switched focus to fucking into my hand than fucking down on my cock. I wanted to hold him against a wall and lay into him, make him hold onto me as I ravished him, but I didn’t think I had any strength left. My body moved on its own, bucking and thrusting until my muscles screamed, but I barely even felt it. That warmth glowed and grew, tracing up my spine and curling aching fingers up between my legs.

“Goro,” I choked out, logic barely swimming to the surface. “Goro, I’m… is it okay if I…?”

A surprisingly gentle hand knotted in my hair, and he pressed his forehead to mine. His gasping breaths brushed against my cheeks as our eyes met. “Do it,” he gritted out through clenched teeth. “Fuck me until you can’t see straight. Bury your cock in me and come.”

I groaned and clutched my arms around his lean frame, his words making my head fill with heat, and light, and my voice drew out a long sibilant note as I pulled Goro down hard and held him there, grinding into him until that feeling overwhelmed me, pleasure rocketing throughout and out of my body, overpowering me in waves of ecstasy until I was dizzy and not even sure if I was still sitting up straight.

Goro moved quickly, ramming his ass onto my cock as I came in him, knocking my admittedly limp hand to finish himself off, jerking hard and low and dirty, and when he came he tilted his hips down to make sure he thoroughly coated my chest. The liquid heat splattering my skin just made me realize what the fuck just happened. I got to have sex with Goro again. I got to _fuck_ Goro.

“We’re not making a habit of this,” Goro complained immediately even as he slumped over my shoulder.

“What, me fucking you, or fucking in general?”

He groaned weakly. “Keep talking and it will be both.”

I just had to laugh, letting my hand stroke up and down Goro’s arched spine. It made him shiver. “You can’t keep away from me.”

“Did for a year,” he argued maturely.

“I don’t think living in a theatre near me, stalking me, and blackmailing me count at all as staying away.”

He lifted himself off my dick gingerly, wincing at the spend that ran down his thigh. But telling, he stayed in my lap. “I love you.”

My throat closed up. It was only the second time he said those words. I kissed him to hid the tears filling my eyes. “I love you too. Wanna go out with me?”

He laughed curtly before kissing me back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was gonna make this a final chapter, but adding the epilogue in this chapter would make it really crazy long and throw off the pacing probably, so I'm thinking one more chapter to wrap up the final threads. I'm SO thankful for everyone's comments and kudos, it really drove me to keep going and make regular updates. Thank you all for reading this far, and I hope you have enjoyed it so far!


	9. Epilogue: The Meaning of Existence

We got an apartment together in Yongen, an easy bike ride from Leblanc. I might have looked down on it back in my hometown, but Goro was actually very into cycling. It was one of many little meaningless things I was learning about him, and it thrilled me. He needed to finish his final year of high school, so I ended up getting a job first. Sojiro welcomed me back with a grumble and sigh, but I could see the smile in his eyes. I got my old job back, this time with pay, although not much. My savings would help us stay in the apartment, but after that, it was going to be tight. Sojiro offered to let me use the attic again, but I haltingly told him it might be tough to fit two people there. He eyed Goro, sitting at the bar drinking his usual while pointedly not looking at either of us. He just chuckled and nodded knowingly.

Living with Goro was… certainly an adjustment. When I suggested it, he had the gall to look insulted, insinuating he was perfectly fine crashing in the back room of a slowly disintegrating theatre. I told him I lived in a cafe attic for a year, so he only got a year of playhouse squatting, too; it was only fair. Since there was no way I was bringing him home to see my parents ( _god_ ) and certainly wasn’t letting him out of my sight again, he agreed.

But Goro hadn’t lived with anyone properly since he was fifteen, he told me. And moving in with someone he had held a gun to on multiple occasions made him… anxious, to say the least. When I came home for the day to him studying, he would jump and slam the book or laptop closed. He tended to go into another room and shut the door for any phone call, even stuff that involved me, too. He never went to bed when I did.

If it were anyone else, I might have been offended, or at least hurt. But Goro only accepted my offer to cohabitate on a condition, and I quote: “Be patient with me.” I had waited a year for him, so as long as he was nearby, I think I could wait a lifetime. Goro couldn’t be forced into doing anything, so I let him have his space and assured myself that if he didn’t want this, he could leave at any time. And every morning I woke up to his warmth at my back, solidifying my confidence that this would turn out okay.

It took weeks, months before I saw the tightness between his eyes start to relax, before I could feel the tension let out of his shoulders, before the whimpering and murmurs at night ceased. He kept waiting for another shoe to drop, for me to change my mind, for black suited thugs to show up at the door and haul him away, or even the police to crash down the door. But when the world realized Akechi Goro was alive and well, it barely registered him, a celebrity who slipped from the public’s cognition and had since moved on. Surprisingly, I think it was a relief for him, not having to pretend anymore, although I think he quietly missed the validation and adoration he received, even if it was fake.

That was alright. I had plenty to offer.

I could see it in the way he would offer me a “welcome home” at the end of the day, how his hand inexorably reached out to brush me as I walked past him, his arm around my waist at night. Every little moment with him felt like one snatched from fate, and for once, I never wanted to dig deeper into the _why_ lest I find something terrible lurking beneath the surface.

After several months, Goro finally relaxed enough to let me see what he’d been working on outside of remedial schoolwork. He had left some papers out on the table we used for meals and work. The room served as a dining room and living area because the only other rooms in the apartment were a kitchen, a bathroom, and a bedroom. Goro had been putting all his work away in his briefcase when I came home, a habit of hiding things, but seeing him finally comfortable enough to leave his things spread out felt like permanence. Before, he seemed ready to pack up and run at any moment, but now he actedsettled enough to leave little traces of his existence in the world.

At least, that’s what I’d hoped.

I wanted to respect his privacy still, not wanting to push this boundary too fast, but it was hard not to notice the printout of an old newspaper article about the big railway crash from almost two years ago. My heart pricked a little at the somber memory. It was one of the first things that happened to me when I came to Tokyo: a subway car operator had a sudden breakdown and crashed the train, injuring dozens. And Goro was the one responsible for that. Glancing at the other strewn documents revealed information about the operator in question, the damage reports, the cost of repairs, the political fallout and eventual resignation of the transportation minister. All that carnage… just so Shido could claim a single chess piece. Not a strategy even ruthless warlord Hifumi Togo would implement.

Goro walked in the room, entering from the bathroom, and froze when he saw me.

“Sorry,” I apologized quickly, looking away. “I didn’t mean to intrude.”

He inhaled through his mouth and exhaled through his nose, visibly putting himself back together, forcing himself to relax. Shit. I hated seeing that. I didn’t want to make him feel like he had to do anything, especially not for my sake. I just wanted him to be able to feel at ease, to be himself... “No, you’re not intruding. You live here, too.” He paused awkwardly, and I seriously considered if I should start wearing blinders like a horse to avoid peeking over at Goro’s work and maybe… but he kept going, luckily derailing the unhinged thought. “It’s not… I don’t care if you look at them. I mean, it doesn’t bother me. I guess you can… no, you _can_ look at whatever… _Fuck._ ” He hissed under his breath, running a hand through his hair. Normally I liked when I made him too flustered to speak in his usual composed, controlled manner, but I preferred that look in the bedroom.

“Do you want me to just…”

“No! No. It’s what I’ve been working on, beyond studying for my final exams.” He rubbed his eyes, grimacing. Concentration. Psyching himself up. _Always waiting for the shoe to drop._ “I’m trying to make amends,” he finished tersely, voice tight like he was confessing to his crimes for the first time. But I sensed there was something more, and I tensed. “And to do that I need to see exactly what I did. Every consequence, intentional or not. I started out taking out the corrupt people Shido put in power, but now I have to face the person who facilitated that corruption. I’m the last loose thread to tie up.”

His tone had a finality that cinched my body in a vice. I could barely get my voice to work when I asked, “So what does that mean? For you, for...this?” _Us._ Us seemed too fragile. With the right desire, enough power, _us_ could be broken so easily.

He ran his hand through his hair again. Stressed. “I need evidence. About myself. Then I’ll turn it over to Sae. Turn myself in to the mercy of the court system.”

When Goro looked back at me, his face fell. I don’t know what he expected I’d do, but silently crying probably wasn’t one of them.

“No,” I breathed.

“What?”

“No!” I said forcefully, stomping over to him and holding him. He fit stiffly in my arms, his whole body vibrating with anxiety like an electric cable. “Goro I- I don’t think I can stand to lose you a _third_ time.”

“You wouldn’t be losing me, Akira, you would just-”

I squeezed him tighter, and he quieted, either from surprise or lack of oxygen.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” I murmured into his hair, tears still pouring like a stream.

“Because I knew you’d react like this,” he miffed. I should have been upset that _he_ was the one getting annoyed at _me,_ but annoyance was his default state, so if anything he probably just didn’t feel anything at the moment.

“I could have helped, somehow. The Phantom Thieves…”

“Don’t exist anymore, remember? None of us have powers anymore. Besides, everyone is scattered. Even Morgana decided to move in with Okumura-san because we’re ‘too gross to live with.’ There’s nothing we can do without the Metaverse.”

The tears stopped as fast as they began. I wiped my face and leaned back, staring him with a challenge. “You think the Phantom Thieves were solely made up of people who invaded Palaces?” Some of my old Joker swagger crept into my voice, and I saw Goro react to it with a hitched breath. Nice to see the roleplaying had a lingering effect on him. I smirked. “No, Goro, I have all kinds of connections in Tokyo. Some of them pretty powerful and influential.”

Since he had never been properly inducted, Goro still didn’t know about all the confidants I had in town. To be honest, most of my friends never realized who I was hanging out with either, or realized the ways they strengthened my heart and made us all more powerful. I listed off the most relevant people on one hand. “Let’s see, in addition to a tenacious public prosecutor, there’s an influential investigative journalist, an eloquent politician, a brilliant strategist...” my grin widened a bit, “...a fortune teller who’s predictions always come true.”

Goro snorted an inelegant laugh. “Now you’re just fucking with me.”

“I’m very serious.” I pressed my forehead to his and closed my eyes, voice dropping. “Even now, you won’t let me help you?”

He sighed. “This is something I have to do. I can’t stop thinking I was kept alive for a reason. That maybe Maruki-” he stopped, pulled away. So that’s what this was about, huh? He still thought this reality was wrong, that Maruki messed with it somehow. That maybe he wasn’t supposed to be here.

My chest hurt.

“I’ll talk to Sae,” I said to his back. “We can confer about what the best course of action would be for you, legally.” I didn’t like it. It felt too much like he was looking for an abyss to jump into, and I didn’t know how to pull him from the edge. But maybe Sae could offer us something like hope. I wasn’t ready to give up on him yet.

*~*

Our schedules never meshed up exactly right, so we made plans to meet with Sae in a couple weeks, once she finished the case she was currently working. It gave me time to confer with the others on what we were planning.

When I had told them about Goro’s survival, I wasn’t sure how they’d react, especially Haru and Futaba. But I shouldn’t have been. They all had memories of those months in Maruki’s reality, of working with Goro. While not everyone necessarily liked him, everyone was happy that he had managed to survive, although none of us had a good explanation for it.

If anything, they were probably more bothered that we ended up together. Makoto dragged me aside when everyone was helping us move in to the apartment and kindly reminded me that the guy I was dating had once shot me in the head. I shrugged and told her I wasn’t technically there for that, and we’d move past that, anyway. She sighed, looking at me like I was insane, but I was used to that look from her, so I just grinned back.

That was was when Morgana decided to move with Haru. It did break my heart to see him go, but honestly, he’d been putting up with a lot from me: moping around my parents house and abandoning him outside a theatre to hook up with my assassin… He had waited such a long time for me, getting increasingly worried but unable to get the door open himself, terrified something had happened to me… When he found out I was having sex, he didn’t speak to me for a week. I couldn’t blame him.

Goro didn’t know how to act around my friends. He was still snappy and curt, traits I had started to find cute, but it did keep everyone at a distance.

Still, when I mass texted the group what Goro had been working on these last few months, I expected at least a few of them to be on the Goro-shouldn’t-go-to-jail train with me.

 **Makoto** : It’s surprising, but it probably is for the best. Shido is serving time for his crimes, maybe Akechi-kun should be as well.

 **Sumire** : That seems fair, doesn’t it? I mean, he caused all those shutdowns…

 **Haru** : And my father…

 **Yusuke** : There is a certain elegance to it. The handsome criminal locked away, leaving his lover alone with his grief...

 **Ryuji** : Wait whos the lover???

 **Akira:** D=

 **Ann:** Ryuji!!

 **Futaba:** Yeowch, rude

 **Ryuji** : Oh shit! Uhh, sorry dude, guess I forgot?

I sighed, pinching the bridge of my nose. Ryuji, bless him, never quite understood the whole “bisexual” thing. Even less so my interest in Goro.

 **Akira:** That’s fine, I know not everyone is into once-dead guys that also tried to kill them multiple times

**Ryuji:** oh gross man why’d you say it like that

**Haru** : adfgfh

 **Haru** : Sorry, that was Morgana

 **Haru** : He apparently agrees with Ryuji

Well, it made me laugh.

 **Akira:** ANYWAY

 **Akira:** So you think…

 **Akira:** I should let him go through with it?

 **Akira:** Alone?

 **Makoto:** He may not have ever been a part of the Phantom Thieves, but he’s part of our group

 **Sumire:** He’s not alone, he’s with you.

 **Ann:** Neither of you have to do this alone! We’re all here for you!

 **Yusuke:** We will always support you.

 **Haru:** You’re never alone so long as we stick together!

 **Futaba:** As long as Ryuji doesn’t forget he’s Akira’s boyfriend now~

 **Ryuji:** Hey!

The weight of it all sunk into my shoulders. After everything we went through, it was hard for me to think of the court system as being a place justice could ever be found. My false conviction, the inability to stop thugs like Kaneshiro, the way Sae once thought of the courtroom as a casino where she could always win, how everyone turned on the Phantom Thieves instead of focusing on the true threat… And yet, everyone still thought Goro should face a judge and admit his part in Shido’s conspiracy. Was that truly the best outcome? I hesitated, recognizing this feeling. Just like when I was seriously considering Maruki’s offer. Maybe Goro was right, back then, in that world that no longer exists. Maybe I was willing to sacrifice everything just to keep Goro at my side.

I didn’t trust myself to know what was right anymore.

I heard Goro swear from the bedroom, glancing out of the doorway at me. “Akira! Isn’t it time?”

I glanced at the clock on my phone. Shit. Sojiro needed me to head out to some store in the middle of nowhere to pick up his order of rare imported coffee beans and a fancy new roaster. He sure was trying to expand Leblanc’s business recently, especially now that he had me as an errand boy to run around Tokyo.

“You’re right. I’ll have to grab a taxi to get there.” I slung my bag over my shoulder as Goro slowly emerged from the room, nearly standing next to me by the time I got all my stuff together. I was nearly out the door when Goro snagged my arm and gave me a quick kiss on the cheek.

“Have a safe trip,” he mumbled, cheeks pink, before quickly retreating back in the bedroom. I touched the spot where his lips had barely even brushed me. Goro never said goodbye when I left. Another sign of him getting comfortable with domesticity? Or… my stomach clenched. Or maybe he was just getting used to saying goodbye.

I headed downstairs and out of the complex, walking quickly to the main road to try to keep my thoughts away from the unpleasant. I waved down the first taxi I saw and jumped in, ready to settle into the seat and drift away, when a familiar voice greeted me.

“Ah, Akira-kun! Is that you?”

Oh. Oh fuck. Maruki was still driving taxis?

He smiled at me from the rear view mirror as he pulled smoothly into traffic.

“Where you headed today?”

Numbly, I told him the address. It was at least forty minutes away. I slunk into my seat. This was just the _worst._ Maruki remembered what we had done in his Palace; he was there for it, after all. Like Futaba remembered. As far as we had ever figured out, the change of heart was totally successful. Metaverse erased, Palaces destroyed, Personas gone. And Maruki apparently accepted the outcome whole-heartedly, just like a change of heart should. But it still felt more than a little awkward to be in the same car with him, especially after our long and difficult fight, resulting in us pathetically wrestling each other to the ground, weakly hitting each other until we finally escaped with the Treasure…

“You look troubled,” he said plainly. I rolled my eyes a little. _Yeah, because we chose a world where we could still find trouble._

“A little,” I admitted.

“Relationships, huh?” Even though he had abandoned his councilor work (too much sorrow, too tempting to break things to fix people), he did still have that knack of driving straight to the heart of my problems. He quickly realized I might not want to talk about this subject and added, “Ohh, but you, uhh, don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to. Just an ordinary taxi driver. Don’t mind the doctorate in clinical psychology. Just here to talk if you want. Or don’t.”

I kind of didn’t, but we had a long car ride, and I had a lot to stew on. “No, it’s nothing. It’s just…” I sighed. How much did I feel like telling Maruki? “My… boyfriend is in a bit of trouble, and I’m not sure what the best option is for him.”

“Hmm,” Maruki hummed knowingly, thinking. He didn’t seem surprised at all by my little confession, but I guess he must have known something. After all, he knew my deepest, darkest wish was to rewrite reality so I could hang out with a mean, insulting, acerbic little shit of a detective, so he probably had some idea where my proclivities lay. “What kind of trouble?”

“Legal.”

“Ah, makes sense.”

I huffed at that a little. What was that supposed to mean? “Anyway, he’s trying to decide if he should confess to some crimes he did in order to make amendments for the pain and trouble he caused. But… I think going to jail won’t undo what he did, and besides, the real people who told him to do the bad shit are already being punished. I don’t see why he needs to be punished, too.”

“Well, that sounds pretty familiar, huh?” He laughed. “I suppose it would be up to a prosecutor to decide who is criminally responsible, right?”

“Yeah, not like they wouldn’t just pin something on a random kid and forget about it.”

He glanced at me in the mirror, eyes soft. “I know it must be hard, but that’s the world we live in.” Tension hung in the air, a gentle but pressing reminder that _I chose to live in this world, there could have been another one…_

“That’s his choice,” I finally settled on. “If it eases his conscience, I suppose that’s what needs to be done. But I don’t like it.”

Maruki nodded like that was the answer he hoped for. “You’re right. We can’t control other people’s actions. We can only love and support them, and try to help them live their best lives. Even if that means they choose to do something we, personally, do not like.” There it was again, that tension. Was Maruki subtly twisting the knife on me for choosing a hard life?

Suddenly no longer in the mood to talk, I pressed myself against the window, not looking forward to the rest of the drive. Maruki drummed on the steering wheel, clearly uncomfortable with the silence.

“Well, I’m glad to hear you have a boyfriend now. I’m relieved you were able to recover.”

Confused, I sat a little straighter. “Recover from what?”

His eyes darted from me back to the road. “You know… Akechi-kun. When my reality fell apart, he…”

My heart leapt in my throat. Of course. This was my time to ask Maruki the most pressing question, the one that had been eating away at Goro for months. “What do you mean?”

He cleared his throat uncomfortably. I suspected, but I needed him to confirm it. “Well, he died, of course.”

Heartbeat even louder, thrumming in my ears. “Maruki… you didn’t save him?”

Confusion flitted across his reflected face. “No, of course not. You changed my heart. I realized that altering reality like that to make everyone happy was just _my_ definition of happiness, and forcing it on everyone would not be the utopia I imagined. Why, did something…”

“Goro survived,” I breathed, wonder filling my voice. “Goro survived _all on his own_ , somehow.”

Maruki blinked so hard I feared he’d swerve off the road. “Wait, so your boyfriend is…”

I wasn’t listening anymore. I pulled out my phone and frantically began texting.

~*~

The almost hour and a half round trip went by like it was nothing. By the time Maruki dropped me off near the apartment, I was practically buzzing with excitement. The Thieves and I had come up with a pretty viable theory regarding Goro’s survival. I raced inside and found him sitting at our multi-purpose table, pouring over a new stack of documents.

He didn’t even lift his head when he started his “welcome back,” but didn’t get past the first word before I tackled him to the ground in a massive embrace.

“You’re alive!” I exclaimed joyously.

“Last time I checked,” he answered bitterly, trying to disentangle himself from me. “Did you interrupt me for that?”

“You’re alive! You’re alive!” My well-planned speech seemed to be stuck somewhere in my skull, because those were the only words I was able to say.

“Akira, why wouldn’t I be?” He asked, suddenly concerned. He grabbed my face and made sure I was looking at him. “What happened?”

I took a deep breath, ordering my thoughts. “When I got a cab to go to the supply shop, the taxi driver… it was Maruki.” I continued despite Goro’s incredulous interjections. “I know, I know, but I got to talking with him- he’s just like that, you kinda can’t help opening up to him- and I realized he had _no idea_ you were alive. He was shocked! And that means he had nothing to do with you surviving.”

The familiar wrinkle furrowed the skin between his eyebrows. “But then how….”

“I’m getting to that. I was talking with Haru and Morgana and some of the others and I think I know. So I told you how after we defeated the God of Control, Morgana technically had fulfilled his purpose and was supposed to disappear. But because he resonated so strongly in our hearts, with the Metaverse blended with reality, we were able to change cognition so he could continue existing. Maruki’s reality was similar- he had used Mementos to change reality. And once you were lodged firmly in the hearts of the Phantom Thieves-” he made a disgusted face, and I grinned- “ _especially_ the heart of a certain Trickster-” a blush, quickly hidden behind his hair- “I think we affected a similar change.”

“It doesn’t make sense that you were able to change events from several months ago that way, though.”

“But it does? Maruki had changed the past for a lot of us. Making Ryuji’s injury less severe, putting Yusuke back in Madarame’s care, keeping Makoto’s and Haru’s and Futaba’s parents alive. His power changed the past. If we were affecting a change on Mementos and his reality, why couldn’t we change _your_ past?”

He shifted, still looking a little uncomfortable, but deep in his eyes, I also saw hope. “So, you just wished there was a way I could survive, and then I did?”

“At least, gave you a _chance_ to survive. You were really hurt.” My fingers ghosted over his chest, where I knew a ragged round scar lay. “I don’t think your survival was a guarantee. But having the hope, the opportunity to survive, even by a thread, I think that’s the difference.”

“I still don’t want to owe my life to anyone.” He said, pressing his forehead into my shoulder. I stroked his hair, and he only flinched a little.

“You don’t. Our hope might have gotten you out of the Palace, but from then on, it was your own will to survive.”

I could feel him smile, despite himself. “Don’t think I didn’t see those moody books on existentialism when we moved in,” he teased suddenly. The sudden topic change threw me. “Next you’re going to be telling me that now that I have my existence, I can find my essence?”

I smiled. The idea that we aren’t born with meaning, but rather we find our meaning later in life. Our essence being something essential, something defining, that makes us who we are. Something that brings us fulfillment. Of course Goro would pick up on that. Of course we were back to philosophy. “I suppose so.”

“But what is my essence?” His voice got quieter. “I’m still not sure.”

I kissed the top of his head. “I’m not sure any of us are ever sure what our essence is. We all just live in the absurd, this world devoid of meaning, and we find whatever we can that brings us purpose.”

Goro tilted up his head and caught my lips with his, drawing me into a slow, sensuous kiss. My hands trailed down his back to his sides, the philosophy slowly draining away to focus on our bodies pressing closer together.

“You once told me that you exist for me to catch you,” he murmured into my mouth after some time. “Did you mean that?”

“Are we still talking?” I asked impatiently, trying to get my tongue back in his mouth.

He bit my lip in punishment. Fine. He continued without pause. “What is your essence, now that I’ve caught you?”

I grinned, grabbing his face and shifting so I was straddling his lap. “To remain caught. To keep you chasing me. To stay with you.”

“Your essence is dependent on other people?”

“Just one.”

He rumbled a low laugh, teeth grazing my neck exploratorily. “Sounds a little co-dependent, Akira.”

“Isn’t all love?”

He nosed the hollow of my throat, pausing just long enough for me to be concerned. “I still want to confess to Sae.”

I pressed my body tightly against his, squeezing him with my thighs. “I know. And if she thinks you should confess and serve time, well, then you better get locked up some place that allows conjugal visits.”

“Akira…” he looked up at me, eyes watery, shiny. “Are you sure?”

“You need to find your purpose. And if that purpose is atoning, then that’s what you’ll have to do.” I didn’t like the idea of losing this close, easy connection to Goro, watching him slowly unspool a lifetime of hatred and rage and realize he can find satisfaction in just existing. But after existence… comes essence. “No matter what, I’m here for you.”

“Because I have to keep chasing you.”

I laughed, plunging my fingers into his hair and hovering my mouth just above his. “Catch me over and over again, and it will never be enough.” I kissed him, and I knew I could just kiss him forever and it still wouldn’t be enough.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That's the end this time, for real! And again, thank you so, SO much for the comments and kudos! Looking back, there was a lot more I feel like I could have done with this, but I was just kind of writing as inspiration hit me while I played through Persona 5 Royal, so it's kind of reactionary and not really planned. Still, I hope everyone enjoyed it, because I enjoyed writing it! I have a little spin-off of sorts planned, because I want to play with Akechi's Palace some more, and then a whole new fic that's a little darker and more twisted, but I'll have to plan that one out a little more.
> 
> One last time, thank you very much for reading, and hope you enjoyed it!  
> PS, if you actually liked the philosophy stuff in this fic, I got my inspiration watching youtube videos from Philosophy Tube and Crash Course Philosophy, so check those out if you want some actual, real discussions on Hegel, existentialism, and all that jazz.


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